Access on the Web?

[jt643]

I am at the planning stages of a project that I need help figuring out where to start.

I want to create a web page that will allow our sub contractors to log in and then based on that log in to display a report that will show them their upcoming schedules for new home construction.

I feel confident about doing this in Access. However, I have never dabbled with getting Access to be viewable on the web for people who do not have Access.

Initially, I am thinking of either doing something in Front Page with ASP. But is there functionality in Access where I can do what I am comfortable with - in terms of coding, forms, etc... - and than save it in such a way where I can upload it to a web site?

As you can tell, I am very inexperienced with the web functionality.

Please let me know what additional information I can provide to improve clarity for this question.

In addition, a portion of the data I will need to query will be in a SQL Server database - but I think I can just link to that from Access.

Thanks in advance!

 

[jsteph]

Generally, ASP (classic) is very similar in syntax to vba. The difference is you'll want to use ADO, set up a Connection to the Access .mdb, etc.

Then all the For/Next, Du Until Rs.eof, etc will be very similar.

However, if a portion will be in sql-server, why not all of it?
--Jim

 

[jt643]

Thanks Jim.

The portion that is on the SQL-Server is data from a third party software application our company just purchased.

I do not have a lot of experience with it but will be going through training next week.

Can users view Data Access Pages on via the web even if they do not have Access?

 

[jsteph]

I have never used data access pages, so I don't know. But generally, it sounds like you just want to have users see a simple html table of work szhezhules based on the contractor login.

This could be stored in a typical access table, including the login, and the html table is just built with a loop on the filtered recordset in the asp page.
--Jim

 

[fneily]

You can do what you want with DAP's (Data Access Pages). You'll be creating DAP's that will create the connections for you using XML. Remember, you're creating web pages so to transfer data from one page to another, you'll use cookies. The language you'll be using is VBScript or JavaScript. VBScript is somewhat like VBA.
You'll run into the problem I run into alot with IT departments. They'll want it coded in ASP because they don't know that Access creates XML code. They never heard of it. In fact, they keep asking me how long has Access created HTML pages. Only the past six years. IT people just don't expand their education.
I created an online Access system for Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) that you could probably massage. Trouble is, Tek Tips won't allow anyone to post email addresses so I can't give you mine.

 

[alvechurchdata]

IT people just don't expand their education.

I agree that system managers don't know about the features available in Access but I think you're being a bit hard on them. IT is a wide field and they're probably running as hard as they can to keep up with advances in their own area.

I try to keep up with Access and Fox but it's ten years since I administered Unix or NT Server and I haven't a clue today on what you can do in Linux or Server 2005.

Geoff Franklin

http://www.alvechurchdata.co.uk

 

[jsteph]

I second alevchurchdata, fneily, you are being a bit harsh, and short sighted. I've never used Access' DAP, because when our IT department expanded our education, we chose to devote that time go to more robust solutions--and that leaves Access out.

I use Access primarily as a prototype/metadata/code-generator tool. Then SQL-Server or Oracle is where the backend goes, and ASP is (for now) my tool of choice to do server-side scripting, since we are an IIS shop. I'm sure DAP is a nice quick and dirty way to get what jt643 needs done, but moving forward, I recommend devoting limited education hours to something more progressive.
--Jim

 

[jt643]

Thanks to all of you for your help.

I understand where each of you are coming from. I am at the infant stages of tapping in to the capabilities of these tools.

So, I will attempt the DAP solution since I have more experience with Access and VB. Since most of the people in the construction industry I interact in are even less experienced with these types of things than me, I hope the limitations of DAPs will not be such that my simple username/password page to produce a filtered report will be attainable.

Thanks again each of you for your time.

 

[JoeAtWork]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Data Access Pages work as follows:

1. The various controls (listboxes, dropdowns, etc.) are special ActiveX controls that need to get downloaded to the user's computer. If I recall correctly you would point to a CAB file somewhere in the HTML for the browser to know where to download them from.

2. You need an Office license to use those controls (although not necessarily have Office installed).

3. All the data processing is done on the client side, so its really only practical as an Intranet solution.

Anyways, this is what I recall when I was comparing ASP to DAPs about a year ago. I had come to the conclusion that DAPs could not be used for an internet application. I can't see how an internet application could be created that doesn't use an internet server to load and process the data. I could understand creating static pages and publishing them to the web server, but not something that dynamically queries the database.

So it seems to me that for an outside user to get up-to-date information from the database, ASP would be the only choice. Although maybe I haven't "expanded my education" enough.