Database query on a website?

[pokerace]

I would like some genreal direction from this from those of you who have been there/done that, or at least know a thing or two about this subject.

I want people with disabilities to be able to visit a website and search for service facilities that match their criteria. For example, all facilities that service blind persons within a city, all facilities that service autistic persons within X miles of their zip code, etc. Of course, the database would keep track of the queried data, but I need to know the options I have, i.e. what types of databases I could use and how to make them accessable from website queries.

 

[pokerace]

I should also say that I am looking for general direction from those with experience in this area, and not a step by step how-to guide.

 

[Olaf Doschke]

My understanding of what you want to do is pulling informations frome anywhere in the web together to your "service facilities for disabled people" database. All the database needs to store are facility data about it's geograhical data, adress and data about the nature of that facility, eg keywords/categories. That does not need any special datbase, you could eg use the widely available mySQL database for such informations.

If you can get the adresses of such facilities it should be possible to find some webservice, eg googles API for google maps, to translate these adresses to longitute/altitude data for a "in my area" search.

Besides pulling together all the adresses I think this would be the hardest part. If all adresses within a range of zip codes would be sufficient to you, it's even simpler.

For a start you should pull together a significant amount of adresses and give users the ability to add to your database, so it will grow itself. You just need a critical mass of data to attract users.

Bye, Olaf.

 

[mrdenny]

You could use just about any kind of database software. MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Sybase, etc.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000)
MCTS (SQL 2005 / Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration / Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration)
MCITP Database Administrator (SQL 2005) / Database Developer (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com