Databases for websites

[stlewis]

Please can I pick your brains?

I have a number of areas in my website (www.thelondonhouse.co.uk) where a database rather than flat HTML would bring benefits. For the glossary of terms I would use a single table with a search function. For the products and services directory, I need a classic three table V - company, category and membership, again with a search function. I would also like to be able to give a company the ability to change their database entry. In all cases I would like to protect my data from easy plagiarism.

At the moment I manage the data by generating HTML from an Access database. In the past I have used a JavaScript 'database' which has a search function, but this dumps all the data to the browser which is ok for small quantities and where plagiarism is ok. I have also played with Instabase, but it never really satisfied, and they seem to have gone bust.

My ISP gives quite a choice of options including CGI and (at extra cost!) Access database, FrontPage, PHP, MySQL, and SQL Server (depending on the hosting platform). The last is the most expensive and by a long way.

I want any solution to be browser independent and so I think that rules out Access and FrontPage?

Can anyone guide me or point me to some useful resources? Very many thanks.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[stlewis]

Please can I pick your brains?

I have a number of areas in my website (www.thelondonhouse.co.uk) where a database rather than flat HTML would bring benefits. For the glossary of terms I would use a single table with a search function. For the products and services directory, I need a classic three table V - company, category and membership, again with a search function. I would also like to be able to give a company the ability to change their database entry. In all cases I would like to protect my data from easy plagiarism.

At the moment I manage the data by generating HTML from an Access database. In the past I have used a JavaScript 'database' which has a search function, but this dumps all the data to the browser which is ok for small quantities and where plagiarism is ok. I have also played with Instabase, but it never really satisfied, and they seem to have gone bust.

My ISP gives quite a choice of options including CGI and (at extra cost!) Access database, FrontPage, PHP, MySQL, and SQL Server (depending on the hosting platform). The last is the most expensive and by a long way.

I want any solution to be browser independent and so I think that rules out Access and FrontPage?

Can anyone guide me or point me to some useful resources? Very many thanks.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[Wolfgang]

Simon,

I recently started - for more or less the same cause - with PHP / MySQL.
I do have small and long ago experience in BASIC, but I found programming in PHP quite easy.

Best thing about it: It's open source (free) and there are a lot of helpful fellas out there if you have any problems.

The resulting code is plain HTML (without any PHP-code), so you don't have to worry about special browser abilities and very little about plagiarism.

I bought a book at amazon.com that I found to be very good for a start.

After learning the basics of the language and analyzing some readymade scripts, I sat down to get the drift on databases (MySQL).
I had absolutely no experiences with databases but it only took me 1 weekend to setup a sortable, searchable, formatted list of people with phone#, E-Mail, address and so on.

So my suggestion is to use PHP/MySQL. It's easy to learn, versatile and free.

Get the latest version at PHP.net, a very good collection of (mostly free) scripts can be found at hotscripts.

There is a very good all-in-one package for Windows called PHPTRIAD. I don't have the link available, but it should be easy to find.
This one does all the setup for you and installs a complete working package with Apache Webserver, PHP and MySQL on a Windows machine.

Wolfgang

[stlewis]

I think I may need to find a book without so many typoes - as in the reviews on Amazon! I can see that I would be among those people thrown too easily.

But it looks like a good option. Thanks. Now we just need someone to say "no, no, you need..."!!

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[Wolfgang]

Simon,

I did not find any typos so far, but I read the german version of the book.
It might be edited a little better or the typos were already known before translation.

Apart from that, I found it very easy to follow and I still use it for a quick lookup of syntax etc.

I also downloaded the PHP-documentation from www.php.net in HTML and Windows HELP format. You can't learn the language with this alone, but it's unbeatable for getting basic info about a specific command fast.

Wolfgang

[BobInce]

All solutions should indeed be cross-browser-compatible; this is server-side magic which the client should never see. The exception is if using client-side data binding, which is an IE-only thing and a really bad design at that. (I doubt your hosts will allow you to use it anyway for security reasons.)

Access is almost never a good choice for a web backend. SQL Server is okay but expensive to license; that leave MySQL, which is not a bad choice for most simple websites. One oddity to watch out for with MySQL is that literal strings in SQL queries have a class of C-style character escaping activated by backslashes, so in your value-escaping code you must double-up backslashes as well as the quote-character.

As for the scripting language, it seems odd you get CGI for free but have to pay for PHP. What languages are available for CGI - Perl, Python? If all you have access to is shell scripting, forget that and go with PHP - it's an enormous pain to write non-trivial CGIs in shell scripts, and there probably won't be a way to make SQL queries with it.

[stlewis]

Andrew

I get CGI (Perl) for free but pay extra for PHP and MySQL.I have checked my contract and found that actually I could (if I switched to NT) get ASP and Access for 'free'. The downer is that I would have to replace the current Perl logging and formmail functions.

If you want to know more, see http://www.nicnames.co.uk/ and go to Web Hosting; I have 'Business Platinum'.

Thanks too for your advice.

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[d-sine]

Hi Simon..

I am a fan of the PHP and MySQL solution, mainly because I most often deal with Unix servers and its a nice combination of apps really. I have produced a few (well, about 4 [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] to be precise) "corporate" projects with PHP & MySQL with no real problems.

The best book I found for MySQL was by a gentleman called Paul DuBois, and I can highly recommend it. For PHP I got the "PHP Bible" and that was pretty good.

PHP is pretty easy to use, I have not really used things like ASP since my first experience (when it was first introduced) many years ago, I just didn't get too far with it really. I would recommend PHP & MySQL to anyone, it can be good fun (okay, so i'm mad!) and very rewarding and also save you a great deal of hard work into the bargain!

The only other thing I'd add is that you may want to do some trials as to how using dynamic pages etc affects things like site response and bandwidth usage, this may help you make up your mind as to whether "dynamic" is the way to go for your situation.

Hope that helps..

d-sine

:: d-sine :: www.d-sine.org

[stlewis]

I've had a go with ASP and Access; with my VBA knowledge and the 24 hours book on ASP, it took only an hour or so to have a little search-a-database page running; it is very easy!

However, I am still worried about whether Access is upto the job if I have to do page logging to it; www.15seconds.com/issue/010514.htm is a thread summary which is useful; the gist is that it cannot handle many (ie more than 5 or so) concurrent users to the same table. Although my current visitor numbers are low, I live in hope! They do also mention that you can run MySQL with, for example, an ODBC connection.

So, I am waiting for clarification on the logging issue; if the ISP can do non-Access logging, then I shall go with Access/ASP, otherwise I will look into ASP/MySQL, and then PHP/MySQL.

Whew.

Thanks, and keep the views coming. I'm sure I am not the only person facing this step!

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk

[stlewis]

The ISP tells me that NT has its own server log - so you don't have to have a special database. BUT they would still recommend going for PHP/MySQL. Access does tend to slow the rest of the site. So, I will now experiment with this second option. Although it costs more, it will save the hassle of changing the logging and use of formmail.

Isn't it fun?!

www.thelondonhouse.co.uk