Databases that are EW friendly?

Question

Hi,

I am looking for a simple database that I can pull things like book titles from.  Does anyone have any suggestions of one that would work well with EW?  Or some sort of content managment that I could easily intergrate with ew pages?  Basically, I just want something that would put titles in alpa order and list them on an html page.  No security is needed...

Thanks,

Peter

Answer 1

Access would certainly work. But if that is all you are going to do, you could probably just put your data in an xml file.

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ClarkNK, A.K.A. HomePage Doctor
HomePageDoctor.com -- Expression Web database tutorials
Ownertrades.com -- Created with Expression, VWDExress, SQL Express, and ASP.NET
Arvixe -- My favored web host

Answer 2

The easiest to use and deploy is Access, which might be fine depending on the traffic load on your site and especially when your users are only fetching data, not writing data.

Or SQL Server.  Or - if all you want to do is add to a list of book titles - no database at all, but an XML file used as the datasource.

Of course, that's half the question.  The other is: how will you get the data from your datasource.  You need to pick a scripting technology.  If your hosting account supports it, basic asp.net for basic data access is easy with EW.  And, ditto, of course, that if you use a database it must be one your hosting account supports.

Answer 3

The answer depends upon whether your using a Linux or a Windows server. If your using a LAMPP stack then MySQL is already loaded and it is easy to use. What are you currently using for server side scripting?

Answer 4

HI,

I am on a windows server...  I was looking for an easy way to intergrate and sorted data....   I am not the best coder on the face of the planet, so I was hoping for a simple answer.   Maybe I am going about this the wrong way...  Maybe there is a simple content managment system.   I am trying to avoid a steep learning curve (still working on EW and CSS).  

Thanks for the help...

Peter

Answer 5

What, exactly, are you trying to do with the data and why would a CMS be any easier than just typing things on the page and publishing with EW?  A database implies you want to have data you don't have to type into the page as you want it to appear, or that you want some interactive flexibility on how it appears.

Answer 6

Basically, it is going to be titles with authors, but that data needs to go a number of different pages in different order.   Search by titles, search by authors, etc.  The data gets updated a lot, so I need to know that it is all acurate.

Thanks,

Peter

Answer 7

It's easy to use Access and EW and asp.net to simply output different search results from a database.  (Again, if your hosting account supports an Access database and asp.net.)

How would you do this with a CMS?

Answer 8

I have no idea how I could do it with CMS...I was sort of talking out loud.   I used access long ago with FP.   Is it sort of the same?

Peter

Answer 9

I'm pretty sure you couldn't do it with a CMS.  The point of a CMS is to let you update pages on the web, without needing a design tool, and without needing to know HTML and CSS.

FP didn't use asp.net.  You'd need to learn the basic controls asp.net has - an access datasource to connect to your database with a query (where you could sort by field, for example, or filter based on user input from another control), and a control using that datasource as input that will display your data the way you want it presented on the page.  The asp.net controls do a lot of the work for you, for basic stuff like this.

But first see if it's an option for you.  As I said, your hosting account must support this.

Answer 10

Basically, it is going to be titles with authors, but that data needs to go a number of different pages in different order.   Search by titles, search by authors, etc.  The data gets updated a lot, so I need to know that it is all acurate.

Thanks,
Peter

Sounds as if you're right, you will be needing a data-driven site for that. Access is about as simple as it gets for your purposes, and since it doesn't sound as if there will be much in the way of interactive, visitor-driven CRUD, Access should be able to handle the load for you.

Also, since you're on a Windows server, the odds are very good that Access support is a free feature of your account (I've never encountered a Windows server that didn't offer Access support. Even many Linux servers support it. ;-)

That said, you will still need a server-side programming language to be able to enter your search terms, retrieve the data, and update the display. In terms of ease of development and deployment, you're not going to find anything better than ASP.NET using EW. You can probably do most, perhaps all, of what you need to do using ASP.NET data controls that come with EW. Depending upon the complexity of your searches, and your display requirements, you may be able to do it using mainly the tag properties panel, with minimal programming.

One of the regulars here, Clark Kurtz, offers tutorials on implementing various soutions using Access and ASP.NET. See Clark's beginner tutorials at http://homepagedoctor.com/ for some very good step-by-step tutorials on how to get started with using Access with ASP.NET. If Clark happens upon this post, he will probably be able to point you to the specific tutorial(s) you need to accomplish your objective. Good luck!

cheers,
scott

P.S. BTW, I seem to recall you coming around fairly regularly back in 2008, around about the time that EW2 was released. Was that you, or a different Petersocal?

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Answer 11

It's even easier to use Access with asp.net than is was using the Frontpage Wizards and bots.

And now that you have described in a little more detail what you want to do, Access would certainly be the simplest way to accomplish what you want to do.

If this is a database you intend to be updating, and if as you indicated, you want to keep the amount of coding down, then having Access on your local machine where you can add new authors / books / whatever to the database, and then just ftp'ing your revised database up to your website is not a bad way to go.

Of course the other option for updating the database  is to have an Admin page on your site that only you can access, where you can add new records directly to the online database. That's not so hard to do, but does take more effort than just updating locally and transferring the Access file to the site.

Take a look at the tutorials. Number 2 and 3 to start with.

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ClarkNK, A.K.A. HomePage Doctor
HomePageDoctor.com -- Expression Web database tutorials
Ownertrades.com -- Created with Expression, VWDExress, SQL Express, and ASP.NET
Arvixe -- My favored web host

Answer 12

Thanks all for your input...