I'm looking for a language to use for a hotel booking. It will need to run as an application and display scrollable grids on screen (say 100 cols by 30 rows). With the user clicking on cells or dragging them around to do things.

I'm very used to producing server based applications but I'm a newbie at applications. The language should be able to read and write to files (local and external). It should also be easy to install ie from an .exe etc. It would be nice if the language was free.

Would PHP handle this or should I be looking at VB, Java, flex, excel etc? Any thoughts welcome.

Mike

I guess not then

php by itself no
but used with a webserver and wth AJAX probably.

if you want a standalone application then I thgink you may need to use a traditional compiled language. whether thats JAVA, VB or whatever depends on you, your experience and whats available

I wouldn't rule out Access, especially as it can be deployed as a runtime, although drag and drop is not easy in VBA

You can get JAVA FoC, but equally you can get , ahem, studfent versions of Visual Studio for not a lot.

I suppose it depends what you are used to.

JAVA is supposed to be easy to learn and felxible. for me coming from a VB background its a pain, not least becuase so much of the language depends on other librories and other functions, not all of whuich are well documented. For me its been like learnign C/C++ I coudl never get to grips with what to me was an alien, newbie hostile language and environment

Cheers for the info - I just looked at Ajax but found the grid controls a bit basic (at least on the open source links I found). I wasn't too taken with Java or C when I tried them last. I guess that leaves me caught between a rock and a hard place

Take a look at the frameworks that are available.

In order to do things efficiently you have to adjust your program and UI model a bit to match what is provided by the framework, but that's not a huge problem in most cases. Once you make that adjustment, you have a clean, consistant, and usually well supported framework that you can build upon. This allows you to turn out complete, well structured, interactive, and scalable sites with a fraction of the effort required to "roll your own" from scratch.

I personally like XOOPS, but I know a lot of folks that like Joomla because it is somewhat simpler and faster.

-PatP

Thanks for the info Pat. My original aim was to implement the program as an installable application. I suppose doing things as a web app might work if the grid control is fast enough.

I've now read page after page of XOOPS and Joomla info (where do they get the names from??) - this frameworks business is a bit new to me but I assume it's just a bunch of integrated packages that manage a web site in various standard ways ( a CMS system ).

What I was after was something that can manipulate a grid on screen in a reasonably fluid manner - an ability to see all the room bookings over a couple of calendar months and have the ability to drag bookings around etc - I couldn't find any examples other than very simple small tables. I assume if it was possible using these tools then an example would have been made.

If there's an open source grid package available either on the web or as an application, and preferably easy to use then that would make life easier.

Mike