Re: online databases

Erin:

Unless you are getting direct replies, it seems no one is answering your
question about databases. It IS a bit involved--but not near as involved as
English grammar. (A-hemmm) And a lot more fun ...

Good news first.

Five hundred items is small potatoes for a database so even a simple
Microsoft Access database would do just fine. No need for a big SQL server.

Now the bad news.

To ACCESS, (pun intended), the Access database, you will need Cold Fusion,
and/or Active Server Pages or a CGI Script running on a server along with
the database. Or--you could--for such a small one--use FrontPage. Any ASP
capable server running FP Extensions should be able to handle this "simple"
task.

However--Using any of these methods may mean you will want to use a
Microsoft NT server as a host. (Apache servers can also do this but require
special software) Nothing wrong with this except that you will get some guff
about Microsoft. (Big long suffering sigh.)

Anyway--this all means that you may have to learn how to set up an Access
database and work with ASP. (Or at the very least, how to work FrontPage
with Access.) And--using ASP beyond that included with FrontPage requires at
least SOME knowledge of either VBScript or JavaScript. You may also need to
implement a small number of Include files or pages. NOTE: Any good ISP
running an NT server with FP Extensions should be able to help you set up
the SQL queries as all are using Open Data Base Connectivity, (ODBC) It's
just getting all the "addresses" right so the software knows who to talk to.

NOW--If all this has caused a sudden onset of the Hives or other nervous
tics, here is a Crude Work Around ??

In as much as 500 items is a VERY small database, you might give some though
to not using one at all. You could set up a template and create new pages
for each item almost as fast as you can drop in the picture and type the
descriptions.

With a separate page for each item, you can use an Include file, (or even
several different ones), to make up your Table of Contents. (One assumes the
items in the catalog may eventually change.) The main Contents Page can be
broken down to major categories similar to Yahoo's infamous "search" site.
You only have to change the Include files, not every page !!

Having separate pages also allows the use of your own--or any of several
free search engines to allow visitors to look for items in the catalog
without using the contents. www.freefind.com/ is just one such free search
engine that we have used several times and have yet to find a complaint.

Well--I said it was crude ...
Best wishes
Ted Temer
Temercraft Designs Redding, CA
temer(at)c-zone.net
www.temercraft.com/
www.newsredding.com/


> A customer wants to put his book catalog online.  It will need to be
entered
> manually into some type of database.  Maybe 500 entries or so.  Can anyone
> recommend a database to do this with?  And how is it then accessed via his
> web page?
>
> Thanks,
> Erin
>
> ===============================
>
> Erin Parker
> http://www.Vaxa.com/31379
>
>
>

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