Internet

[smash81]

Hello,
I am currently a VB programmer.I am trying to start
programming for the internet.I tried using ASP but was
not very successful in getting the expected output.
Is it possible to use PURE VB and make a full fledged
web based program that can retrieve and store data into
an access database?
If it is possible please help me on how i can do this
help me on where i can get relevant help from.
Thanks

 

[jmarler]

You can write WebClasses (an IIS Application using a DLL Wrapper around the ISAPI calls) in pure VB. There is an AP page that VB will produce automatically . . . but that page does nothing more than instantiate the WebClass. After that, all of the code is standard VB (albeit stateless) and you can even run yor webpage in debug mode inside of the IDE. - Jeff Marler B-)

 

[dilettante]

I agree with Jeff above. What concerns me with Web Classes though is that it was a short-lived technology. I'm not burying it yet, and haven't used it myself, but it came out with VB6 and is being replaced by Web Forms in VB7 (.Net) which would make me leery of adopting it.

Of course ASP.Net seems to be done in much the same manner - there isn't any VBScript anymore, just VB. How that works I hope to get time to look into soon.

But in web development you need to get past the problems you've been having, because I'd guess they stem at least in part from the way layers of code and markup get interleaved.

You have the server-side logic, which today is usually VBScript on an IIS box, then you have the HTML, and finally the client-side logic - usually JScript/JavaScript. And they're all interleaved in a typical ASP page. Of course that leaves out the issues of client-side object references (ActiveX controls, Java applets), image files, etc. etc. Yeah, complex ASP can be really complex until you get in the habit of seeing the layour you're working on through the haze of the other layers.

Throw in CSS, and XML/XSL, scriptlets, and whatever the arms race introduces tomorrow... there is no way simple VB client/server development approaches are going to cut it in the marketplace. .Net is supposed to try to find a middle ground, but it also reintroduces the old client/server model again. It is supposed to support "rich client" code like your old VB projects that get delivered as used over the network. These then run locally, communicating back to the web server (which now serves up "web services" in addition to web pages) using something like SOAP.

My advice would be to learn DHTML with no server code first (the pages look like HTML to the web server, even though they have blobs of script code in 'em that run at the client). Then learn classic ASP, leaving out any DHTML to simplify matters. Finally learn how to employ objects at the client (browser) end

 

[dilettante]

Sorry, hit the "submit" by mistake! What a dork, eh?

...client objects like graph objects and such. Then learn about data-binding.

Once you get here you can worry about tying it all together.

Or maybe hold out for .Net's release and get your hands on a beta to start learning it.

But I suspect Web Classes are a dead end.

Just my opinion, but it reminds me of people who started out learning GUI-based everything and never learn how anything works. They are doomed to always having to ask somebody else how to do something every time they need something new.

In other words I believe in the "teach a man to fish" philosophy... except in computing it seems to mean working with the technology from the primitive end up toward the complex. Kind of the difference between a guy who makes his own furniture and one one buys a kit a K-Mart. Which guy's going to end up with a job making furniture?