Should I use ASP or some other technique?

[shaferbus]

Before I delve into converting a whole project from Access to SQL AND teach myself enough ASP to accomplish the task described below, is there any other sort of web programming technique besides ASP that would allow my remote users to "click the button" to run a procedure in my Access form? I know SQL is superior to Access in many ways, but this is very low volume stuff, very low concurrency, and it WORKS, so I hate to mess with it too much if I can avoid it.

I have a fairly simple Access database to display scheduling information for drivers. When they check their schedule, they click a button to "OK" each trip (each of which is a record). This command button runs a procedure that checks to see if the driver has OK'd this trip before, adds a record to a "timestamp" table with date and time if they haven't, and updates the date and time if they have.

Now the boss want this to be web-accessible so the drivers can check (and OK) their schedule remotely! Silly me read the MS documentation which made it sound like a Data Access Page would do the job, but I've learned my lesson - the remote user can type info, but not run procedures:-(

My second idea was ASP, which I was looking to gain more experience with anyway, but apparently there is no way to run the Access procedure that way either. From what I've learned, I'd have to recreate my project in SQL first (yet more self-education LOL), and THEN learn how to display and manipulate my records via ASP.

Please don't think I'm that lazy guy looking for a piece of duct tape to cover up his poor planning!! This is a NON-critical little timesaver (and papersaver) that I whipped up as a convenience, and that was that - until someone got a bright idea, and now it's looming as a major undertaking! If there's a better suggestion on web-enabling this thing, please post!

Thanks!

 

[Ecreations]

You can use any server scripting language like PHP, ASP,JSP , ASP.NET, ColdFusion to do all of the above! if you choose to go ahead with it, you can always keep the access database and use ado to create your sql queries without going to SQL server since the database is small!!!

theres a product called Dreamweaver from Macromedia

http://macromedia.com

that would help you create your application using those server side technologies


Good luck


The solution is simple, the problem is complex.

 

[MrGreed]

As stated above you can go with any language. If you are mostly a MicroSoft company and you have IIS readily available I'd stick with a product-line you already are used to.

When you say "Access procedure " do you mean a stored procedure you have in access or you have an access form with code. If you have a stored procedure (a stored query) in access you can run that from ASP with ADO.

If you have been thinking about learning ASP and ASP seems what you are most interested in then learn what appeals more to you.

Tek-Tips has a great ASP forum and you should get answers to most questions you'll ask.



MrGreed

http://www.pastame.com

"did you just say Minkey?, yes that's what I said."

 

[shaferbus]

Thanks for the encouraging replys! I've been browsing the Tek-Tips ASP forum, and from what I had read had pretty much given up hope on using the stuff I've already built.

The "procedure" I mentioned is a VBA script named TimeStamp in a standard module of the Access database. When the user clicks the command button, it runs the TimeStamp sub. It meets our requirements in-house just fine, but the boss wants it available to the drivers via the web (which really is a good idea, as these guys are charter drivers with no set work schedule - it's on a per-trip basis. Checking the schedule on-site often requires a special trip on thier own time to get there during office hours).

Initially I was hoping that the native Access web functionality would do the job, but that appears to be too limited for the job. I'd be a newbie at anything but HTML, but learning some web scripting is bound to pay off in the future somehow. Think I'd be better off investing money in something like Dreamweaver, or time in learning ASP code? Would it be as simple as inserting a command button with some attached code?

BTW, we're running MS Small Business Server 2000, so I have IIS 5 and also have SQL 2000 available, but not installed (but I'd probably just use MSDE if I went that route - no sense killing a flea with a howitzer)

Thanks again for the info. If it weren't for Tek-Tips, a one-man shop like mine would be sunk!

 

[Ecreations]

in that case if i were you i would stick with asp

Best of luck


The solution is simple, the problem is complex.

 

[Tarwn]

Starting off if you need results I would probably go with Dreamweaver (I hear people lining up to comment on mer actually suggesting a non-text editor ).

Anyone can write bad ASP simply by copying and pasting other code and twiddling with it till it sort of works. DreamWeaver can write somewhat OK ASP code for you but give you an IDE to work with until you feel comfortable writing code by hand.

In the end I always suggest that if you have the time and energy, learn to code by hand. Read through sites like the ASP and ADO references at w3schools.com. Hit some articles at 4GuysFromRolla.com, read through the tutorials here. After spending a good amount of time learning you will be able to turn out more readable and more efficient code than DreamWeaver. And if you get good enough you will eventually be able to turn out code faster than developers that are dependant on Dreamweaver.

I once write the functional portion of a site (550 lines of mostly ASP, minimal HTML) in less than 2.5 hours. Most of the functionality (recursive functions, etc) were beyond Dreamweaver. I have also challenged DreamWeaver 'programmers' to duels before, back when I was spending more time with ASP (it's been a lot of .Net lately).

-T

[sub]01000111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00111111[/sub]
The never-completed website:

http://www.tiernok.com/

 

[Funka]

If you were familiar enough with VBA to write scripts, you will be pleased to hear that VBScript (default language of ASP) is very very similar! One minor difference will simply be in how your ASP page interacts with the database, but that is done through various ADO objects which you probably were already using in Access anyway...

Another difference is --- and note i am speaking about Classic ASP here rather than how ASP.NET will try to fool you into thinking it's somehow done differently --- is that in this "stateless" client-server environment of your web application, is that you don't really have server events (like responding to the click of a button), but rather you build forms to submit data and then build pages to process that data. For example, page "A" has your button, which when clicked, submits a form to page "B", which then handles the processing of that form. (they don't have to be physically different files, but this is just to give you an idea of how it is done.) Page "B" would be where all your action takes place.

good luck in your new project!
-f!

 

[shaferbus]

Great! Thanks everyone for the encouragement and suggestions. I know ASP isn't a huge mystery - just another learning curve to climb - but I'm glad to hear from Funka it's similar to VBA, so that makes the project look a bit more friendly. About time I learned it I guess LOL. (Remember when the web was new, and there was great demand for those rare people who could program HTML?) I picked up an ASP reference book and I'm starting to wade into it.

Thanks Tarwn for the reference sources! I've found that no one explains every process, function, and procedure the best way for every reader, so more references are better! I know just what you mean about the pros and cons of Dreamweaver - sounds like you use it like I used to use FrontPage to do the simple structural setup, then I get into the code to refine it.

Now another question - should I even bother with trying to get my Access VBA code to run, or just recreate it in ASP? From what I've read so far ASP can manipulate tables, doing lookups and adding records, and I'm only working with two tables. Would that be a more straightforward approach at a beginning ASP experience level than treading the poorly documented road to getting Access to do it via the web? I've already had one false start on this project, so I'd like to be sure I'm getting off on the right foot this time

Thanks!