Database help

[lanche19]

Hello All,

I need some assistance from the wizened veterans here.

I have used FrontPage for over 6 years. I recently bought Dreamweaver, and I'm trying to make the jump to using a database in some of my web sites. I have just bought XP Professional and Microsoft Access to have at my disposal, and I am slowly fumbling my way into creating a database(s) that will contain the information I need.

I'll tell you what I'm trying to accomplish and maybe you can tell me the easiest way to get there. I don't know programming and code, which is causing me much grief. I've bought several books in the last 2 weeks, for Java, Javascript, Access, Dreamweaver, XML, and none of them is helping to spell out for a layman what I'm trying to do. I'm about to move my webs sites from a server with a Linux platform to a windows platform with FrontPage extensions. My new hosting company says it will support the following:

"Our Windows based servers run Microsoft Windows 2003 as their operating system and do allow for ASP and ASP.NET scripting as well as Perl, PHP and CGI. We also offer MDSE data hosting with the ASP.NET platform. And we can install the ASP.NET starter kits upon request at no extra charge. "

I have a few mortgage web sites. I want to be able to create a database of lenders that has basic contact information about them that can then be dynamically displayed on my home page for site visitors. Going a step further, I want the lenders to have the ability to login in with a password through a browser and update any of their information without having access to the other lenders info on the site and have it update real time; with the lender with the most recent information displaying first, the second most recent next, etc.

Needless to say, I am completely lost. Coming from a WYSIWYG backround, trying to decipher all this programming is impossible. I was so frustrated yesterday I almost gave up. The books I have are very general about setting up local servers, setting up a DSN, loading scripts, etc.

Can anyone give me some pointers if there is a simple way I can teach myself how to do this? I don't have the resources to hire a database programmer. I thought setting this information to display in my web sites would be easier but I'm in completely over my head.

Is there a way to do what I'm looking for with just FrontPage, MS Access, and Dreamweaver?

Thanks in advance for your time.

Scott

 

[AdmanOK]

I would strongly recommend against trying to use MS Access to run the backend database for a production website... you definitely need to look into something like MS SQL Server or mySQL. Your web host should be able to provide you with something like this at little or no extra charge.

It is really not that hard to write a web page to display the information from a database, but writing the sections to allow for logging in and updating through a web interface will require more work... it's not hard, but it's also not something that someone without any experience can do overnight. I would suggest taking a look at the ASP Resource Index (

http://www.aspin.com)

to look for tutorials and script examples. This was my primary learning tool when I was starting out with ASP programming!