HOW DO I COMBINE SO MANY DIFFERENT PROGRAMMING TECHNOLOGIES? 2

[bublathejuggla]

hi all. im a third year computer science undergraduate.

I am carrying out a project which is a web based mobility information system for blind, partially sighted and fully sighted users. There is a different login for each type of user.

The basic idea is that the user selects two points within the university vicinity which represents their desired 'journey'. The system then queries a database that holds small subroute information. The shortest path is calculated and all the pieces of subroute information are put together and presented to the user in a HTML web document.

PROBLEMS: HTML had to be used for each web page's static content in order that it be successfully interpreted by assistive technologies i.e. screen readers.

JavaScript has been used for checking the validity of forms.

NOW i need (a) to implement server-side programming so that user profiles and logins can be saved and retrieved to/from the server (b) to design and implement a database that stores all the user and route data and (c) to code an algorithm that finds the shortest path between points and creates a HTML web page with the route information DYNAMICALLY.

I have no experience of server-side programming. All implementation language suggestions welcomed.

MS Access has been the proposed database implementation language. Again, any other suggestions welcome.

The algorithm is proposed to be in Java, as I have most experience with this language.

SO HOW DO I PUT ALL THESE TECHNOLOGIES TOGETHER??????? PLEASE HELP.................. :0(

 

[RISTMO]

Hi,
I'd recommend using PHP (scripting language) and MySQL (database). They are both open source, which means free. Last summer, I started learning those two and within a month I was building message boards!!! PHP is very easy to learn, and it communicates with MySQL very well. MySQL is said to be MUCH faster than Access or Oracle. With PHP, it is very easy to output html,css,js, etc. I don't know hardly anything about JAVA, but I think that PHP would be better because it is so powerful.

Rick

 

[blueark]

I started using ASP.NET a few months ago and haven't looked back. Again, it's free, but you'll need to be running off Windows servers. If that's not a problem then it has a few advantages to offer you:

1. Form validation is extremely simple (JavaScript is written for you).

2. Authentication is also very easy to implement (you can easily mark entire folders as requiring authorisation, and it will automatically send people to your login screen).

3. It has a new way of interacting with databases (including Access) that makes it faster than 'classic' ASP. I don't know if Access would be as fast as mySQL though -- I've only tried SQLServer (which isn't free!) and performance seems to be fine.

4. It's (supposedly) language independent, so you should have no problem finding a language to suit your implementation.

hth

 

[imstillatwork]

for a project like this just use access and asp.

 

[Tarwn]

A couple points of clarification:
MySQL has been proven to be faster than Access, SQLServer and Oracle. Access in fact came in absolutely last in the tests.
One benefit from using Access, however, is that it is file based rather than an actual server. This means you don't have to have a full server running to test with it. Why is this a benefit? Say your developing a site on multiple machines. You can transfer the database from machine to machine very easily and continue developing like nothing changed. I generaly do my initial development using access and then switch to either SQLServer or MySQL.

Concerning Server side languages. PHP is free, efficient, and a very solid language. This coming from someone who predominately uses ASP. PHP is a little more complicated to learn than ASP(ie, VBScript or javascript), but ASP has some serious "clumsy" moments. I would stay away from JSP unless you have had some java experience already, to a new user java can be quite a pain.

ASP.Net. Not much I can say about this. It is decently fast, being compiled code. It isn't to difficult to use, provided you have experience with the Microsoft line of IDE's, and it does do a great deal of work for you. Unfortunatly, this language is completely differant than the other web languages available in that it keeps it's state across multiple connections (with other languages variables only exist while a page is being generated and then disappear forever more). The code state is a pseudo-state that is kept by saving to memory and then passing javascript variables to the client. When I bought .Net it cost me $100 (academic version with 3 licences), I wasn't aware that it was free now.

Now OS restrictions:
PHP: Heh, what restrictions?

ASP: You need MS IIS running (windows) or a 3rd party product (chilisoft). The few third party products I have seen out there aren't as good as the original (of course) and don't support everything exactly the same

JSP: I believe you need Tomcat runing which cvan actually be run on top of Apache or IIS. I may be wrong about this however because my last JSP experience was with a compnay using Cocoon to generate the JSP/Servlets for them from tag markup and xml.

Coldfusion: I have heard some good and some bad about Coldfusion. Apparently it will run on any major OS, it's decently fast, but it's code looks similar to HTML. Don't take my word for it, this is the one language on this list that I have never used. Btw, the Tek-Tips site is in CF.

ASP.Net: As far as I know this is another IIS only product. And I am pretty sure you arer forced to use their IDE, since this will be compiled code.


Concerning client-side javascript:
It is rare that people come up with something new that they need to do with javascript. There are millions of examples out there for javascript as well as lots and lots of tutorials and books availble for it.

Well, just a quick run down
In the end we are all biased, so the best way to make the decision is probably to sit down with a beginners tutorial for each and see which one leaves the better taste in your mouth. I woukld definately suggest having at least a basic knowledge of each, though, it helps to lok at problems from differant angles.

-Tarwn --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

[blueark]

Regarding ASP.NET (my personal bias!)

You mention Microsoft's line of IDE's so I presume you paid for Visual Studio.NET. Although many have argued that it's an indispensible tool, it's not a necessity. You can download the .NET framework (including the CLR, a few compilers and ASP.NET) for free from Microsoft's website. There is also a cut-down version of Visual Studio called Web Matrix which is also free, but you can also get away with any text editor, such as Notepad. Personally, I found it difficult to make the transition from ASP because it is quite different, but now I wouldn't go back.

As for OS restrictions... yes, you're quite right about it being IIS only, although I believe some versions of PWS support it to a degree.

Do you have any links regarding performance comparisons between the different server side languages and/or database systems? I must admit, I tend to get stuck with whatever technology is most readily available to me, so I would like to see what alternatives are worth investigating.

 

[Tarwn]

Sorry, I remember the results of the tests I have seen, but lost the links over 6 months ago. I remember I originally found them from a google search, so youshould be able to find some more tests. Basically the db tests were benchmarks of all the systems doing similar tasks, I don't remember much from the server-side language tests.
Thanks for the info on ASP.Net, like I said I haven't had the time to play with it as much as I would like, and I hadn't heard of the tool you mentioned above.
-Tarwn --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

 

[imstillatwork]

um yeah. check out the project he is working on. it requires nothing but for it to work. the easiest to set up and use is access and ASP.

Coldfusion: "but it's code looks similar to HTML"

uh hu. its tag based. BUT it has a scripting mode that you can invoke ANY time if you have alot of non display code in blocks it runs much faster this way. Cold Fusion is EXTREMELY easy to learn, and quit suitalble for heavy load e-commerce sites and has GREAT file managment capabilities. not to mentio built in graphing and text search.

If you have the time, download CF, its a free server. fully functional, but after 30 days, it is dev only, all function still works, only your local ip can access it though, so you have all the time in the world to learn without buying anything.