Hi,

I've just joined up, this looks like a very organised forum, and am looking forward to searching it often for pearls of wisdom

Am about to post but not sure which section to put it into - whether it would be "Applications & Tools", or "Database Concepts & Design".

My enquiry is: I'd appreciate pointers regards which software to buy, learn & use, for a database application I'm developing, with a view to eventually selling my application on to other firms.

Would like direct advice, and/or pointers towards the best books to read.

I've been using Microsoft Access as a desktop application, which has been nice & easy, but assume I need something more robust and undoubtedly more complex if using it over the internet at more than one site, or if selling the application to other companies. Would like the application to be scaleable.

Thanks! =D

Keep in mind that you're asking for suggestions, which are inherantly opinions. I'm sure you've heard all of the old lines about asking for opinions, most of which don't qualify for the "PG" sort of posts we encourage here on DBForums!

I've got a slightly unorthodox suggestion, but one that seems to fit your needs wonderfully.

MS-Access can handle a dozen people nicely, but it does not scale to Enterprise grade applications very well. It can usually be bludgeoned into working by well disciplined experts who are willing to spend many, many man hours working to overcome some of the scaling issues that Access has, but this isn't anything that I'd suggest.

MS-Access does make a great prototyping tool for Enterprise applications. It allows you to quickly build, analyze, and experiement with your ideas to see what works and what doesn't. It even allows SMALL scale testing (a few users at a time).

Best of all, MS-Access will happily use a MS-SQL (Microsoft SQL Server) database. This database engine will scale to Enterprise tasks. Several very large databases on the Internet today use MS-SQL.

What I would suggest is that you get your application designed, prototyped, and functionally tested using MS-Access. Once you have things working as you'd like, I'd create (or hire someone to create) a web site that delivers your MS-Access application as a web site. Odds are very good that this web site would be created using one of the tools in MS-VS (Microsoft Visual Studio) such as C#, or Visual Basic. If you (or your developer) have strong preferences, you could certainly use other tools to build the final web site.

Before you start to build your application, you might want to read up on SaaS. There are a number of things that you can design into an application that will make it easier or impossible to deliver without significant changes. Understanding those things up front can save you hours or months of work before you can start to sell your product.

-PatP

Hi Pat,

Access is indeed excellent for "sketching" ideas quickly, so your advice of using this to test my basic design, seems to me very sound indeed. Many thanks for your excellent advice - this has kept me on the right course for now!

If I'm to return to this thread at a later stage, seeking further advice re. software-choice for making my database accessible via the web, which section should I post in, would it be "Applications & Tools", or "Database Concepts & Design"?

All the best, and again, thank you very much indeed, for the time you've taken to help me with this. Very much appreciated!

Without knowing what your question will be, the only answer I can provide is "Maybe" which doesn't help much.

When the time comes, post it where you think it makes sense. If you guess wrong, ask a moderator and we will move the thread for you. That's one of the nice things about CMS/Database design... Most (if not all) small problems can be fixed with very little effort!

-PatP

Ok, ta