Re: How do you work on MS-based websites?

Hi Kevin,

are you really sure you must use IIS? I would analyze what
are really the needs of the customers. Not what he believes
he need but what he really need.

For example if he has some backend process which saves data
in this ... erm... Access "Database", this could easy be replaced
with a server running your LAMP Or even win2k and cygwin environment.
You can as well use Apache, PHP (if you are familar with it) and
perhaps postgres. With cygwin you have a really shell and
really openssh just like operanding systems these days have ;)
(win2k even has some rudimentair telnet services, but dont try this
at home, kids ;))
With either setup - unix/linux or cygwin - your client can connect
his backend processes via ODBC (at least postgres has decent
ODBC drivers and outperforms Access easyly in every aspect :-)

Would this be a way to consider?

I also should mention that Zope runs native on win32 and can connect
to every ODBC database. With Zope you could work via web.

Either solution is better to work with compared to transferring a whole
GUI over the net and clicking on gadgets which appear to be as respondible
as bubble-gum ;) Not to mention the high security risc. At least
VNC tansfers passwords in clear text.

IMHO win32 can be placed on some descs, but I dont like it in a productive
server environment because its so hard to administer if you dont have
physical access to it. Its almost everytime like operating thru a slow
keyhole.

For the customer its an easy equation: supporting win2k/iis is much more
expensive as the solutions I outlined below. You will work longer, you
might also need expensive software (even your license of win2k on
your site costs a lot - not to mention the database and "supporting" tools.

HTH
Tino Wildenhain


--On Freitag, 27. September 2002 14:07 -0500 Lisa Whirrett 
<justlisa(at)grm.net> wrote:

> Kevin,
>
> For general IIS related topics, http://www.iisanswers.com/ is a great
> site. I work completely remotely on both Win2k and NT4 servers.  We use a
> terminal server client to connect to win2k and VNC (
> http://www.uk.research.att.com/vnc/ ) to connect to NT4.
>
> HTH,
> Lisa
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kevin A. Jackson" <kevin(at)nvision.on.ca>
> To: <hwg-servers(at)hwg.org>
> Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 11:04 AM
> Subject: How do you work on MS-based websites?
>
>
>> Great resource, I have been lurking here for many years :).
>>
>> It's been a while since I asked a newbie-question like this, but we have
> been building complex websites in LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) for
> several years now and we have a client that needs us to work inside an
> existing MS setup: Microsoft-IIS/5.0 on Windows 2000, with Frontpage
> extensions and MS Access as a database.
>>
>> When working in LAMP, we work in Telnet/SSH, we can see what is going on
> with the server through the command line, and some of our staff use FTP
> programs to move files up and down to the remote web-servers from our
> local testing servers. I know we can access the web server easily enough
> through FTP, and Frontpage (if we must!), but I feel as though I am
> working blind - how do we do things like setup or connect to a database?
>>
>> We have a working licensed version of Windows 2000 server running in our
> office here, but the process of setting up a working web server, let alone
> database connections, seems like a long learning curve.
>>
>> Apart from RTFM (which I am doing - sigh), are there any quick hints as
>> to
> how you MS-shops out there operate :)?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>

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