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What to use for the website?

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by serval7

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Ok, I don't have much experience with database programs, I have used Access in the past and it seemed pretty intuitive for me, (I'm good with MS products).

I have Dreamweaver MX and have been designing small (non-interactive) sites for some clubsin my school.

I want to know what I should use to create pages such as the ones in www.intranets.com or www.communityzero.com that have message boards, picture galleries etc.

I think they use databases to store all members information and the messages/discussions/pictures posted. I don't believe it is a very hard thing to do (at least not hard enough to verify 100s of $$s of charge).

I would be glad if you could point me in the right direction for this.

Extra special mega-super thanks in advance for all help..

13 replies

by breze

Serval7,

If you are an MS-Man then SQL should do the trick! The mechanism is very similar to DB using Access and a majority of the web servers out there will support it.
-Good Luck

by gokhan

Hello,
I think your needs are basic( Do not start thinking to build something like intranet before you learn a programming language and gaining strong database skills ). So I will give you some ideas
- ezPublish: http://developer.ez.no/
- phpNuke: http://phpnuke.org/

Hope these 2 links will lead you to right direction.
Wish you good luck

Gokhan Arli (Web Developer)
gokhan@sylow.net
www.sylow.net / www.sylow.nl

by pjburke

If you are already familiar with Access, start with that. Attempting to learn anything more exotic or high-powered now will just distract you from your main goal and task-at-hand: building a working dynamic, data-driven website. Get Site 1, Build 1done & functioning... then go back and evaluate alternatives if necessary. A whole lot of top professionals use Access to prototype serious, high-traffic, high-availability and even truly "mission critical" (as in military 'mission critical') web applications, then up-size them to SQL Server later... so you could do a whole lot worse. So start with what you know... but DO start.

by jryan999

Hi there,

Myself I'm an Oracle specialist having worked with it for over 16 years on huge mobile phone billing systems - it's very powerful and stable.

However, I agree with previous comments, stick to what you know until you outgrow it.

Access is in fact more powerful than you may have imagined. BT-Cellnet the UK based built their "prepay" mobile phone registration system using Access as a "quick and dirty" then migrated to Oracle when it got too big. I was astounded when I found nearly 1m customers in the database.

Yes it has limitations, but it's unlikely without a small development team and a huge user populations that you'd hit them just yet.

Good luck.

by texasjetter

You need to consider the OS of your hosting platform before selecting your database. If your web host uses Windows as the OS then Access is a good choice. SQL will most likely be avaiable as an additional charge item. If your web host uses anything other than Windoes you should look at one of the "other" databases. Keep in mind it takes a third party product (like ChiliSoft) to get ASP pages to run on non-Windows machines, which is how you want to do Access/SQL connections.

by ed_gilmore

A common mistake is the thought that if you have an AS400, you will need a different database even though you are using Websphere. DB2/400 works very well in a Web environment.

by shafi.ahmed

hi
i am into lotus notes / domino but do a lot of web developement. I have a website called www.goarealestates.com and have used perl and mysql. Believe me i think it is the best backend database to have, which is very fast when queried. And almost all web hosting guys can affors to have it cos it is free .

by danmac

I agree with the above posts that say that you've got some work to do before you worry too much about database technologies (i.e. learning PHP, ASP or Perl), and that Access can do the trick if what you're doing is fairly lightweight (less than 100,000 rows per table).

However, when you do get to the point where you're looking at an alternative to Access, there is no reason to use anything other than MySQL or PostgreSQL in a moderate production environment. MySQL is probably the better choice to get started on the move away from Access. It's a little more user-friendly and quicker to get a handle on. The documentation is also better organized and easily available (There's a really good book from NewRider on MySQL - red cover).

I workfor a consulting company and we have used both MySQL and PostgreSQL on many projects. We only use PostgreSQL as a default because of it's extended features (Transactions, Stored Procedures, Sub-selects), but if you don't know what any of these itemsare then there's no reason not to use MySQL... ;)

And the biggest reason why the above databases are popular - they're Free! You're going to need to be developing a pretty big, mission critical application to warrant spending the licencing fees on SQL Server or Oracle. Until you get to a database with tables that have millions of records and are doing multiple complex queries per second for hundreds of users, you won't be able to see much difference in performance.

Ok. I'll shut-up now.

by cuwickliffe

From what everyone else has posted, I can recommend Access (what you know) or PHP/MySQL (what is also easy). Dreamweaver MX intergrates well with both database products. I personally use a lot of ASP pages on our departmental website (http://union.clemson.edu) and work it with an Access database, but we also use PHP and a MySQL database on a related website (http://www.clemsonnow.com) that a colleague has worked on and used to run off my server.
Your best bet? If the server supports it, go with Access and perhaps ASP pages. If your provider is a UN*X shop, you're probably better off with PHP/MySQL.

Adam

by jimkunkel

postgreSQL has user level security, triggers (aka "stored procedures"), rules ("stored procedures lite"), transactions and is much faster than mysql in an environment where there are lots of users doing a mix of reads, inserts and updates. It is slower than mysql in a "write infrequently and read a lot" application.

by raventec

SQLite is a new ACID-compliant database that is going to be integrated into PHP - this fact alone suggests that it is likely to become a major player in the web database arena. As with postgreSQL, its free and inital benchmark tests suggest good performance. ODBC drivers are available allowing you to also build standalone and server applications in Visual Basic, C# etc. This may not be the ideal product for the novice to jump straight in for though - the value of MS Access has been well stated here in other posts, though do remember that it does not like a large number of concurrent connections.

by bluemoonsailor

On thing I would strongly recommend: Stick to simple, ANSI, SQL. What this means is that you don't use the nifty 'non-standard' features of your DBMS.

Why? This will help to limit your dependance on any one DBMS. If you discover that a differentDBMS would have been a better choice (or your customer prefers something other than what you've developed in - yes, it does happen) then you're ahead of the game. Conversion between DBMSes goes from insurmountable obstacle to realisticly possible.
And, yes, this is the voice of experience speaking ... ;-)

by mclouse

I think the way to go is to go with Access. Lay out your tables then migrate them to SQL server. Many scripting languages are very similar in what they do, if you learn VBScript, you can transfer much of that knowledge over to another language should you choose. What I like about VB/Access/SQL is that you can get started with a small outlay of cash. I use Macromedia Dreamweaver, text pad, Access and SQL Server for all my work. If I had another job with a different language I could easily get up to speed in a short period of time but I do agree with using what you are comforatable with.

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