Question for any programmers out there

'generated asp'... you some sort of add-in freak?

If you're already using SQL Server, and using IIS and .asp, just right an activeX component like a vb .dll with ado to serve up a recordset or your own custom collection classes that you can display on your page. I've been pulled into the world of servlets and jsps because most businesses are java bigots, but there's no reason given your SQL Server design that COM won't work. As a matter of fact, it's preferential since jdbc sucks.

Have you done database programming before? Definitely used stored procs... you can just use an ado command against a stored proc so that you can maintain the SQL (as your schema changes) outside of having to recompile. IMO, the one thing bunk about IIS and asp is that you have to have control over the box in the development environment (if you're not already coding against your own machine) since most nt admins are idiots and mismanage filters/directory security, etc.

I hear IIS5 makes most .asp coding cake though.

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"Everyone I know has a big but...

come on Simone, let's talk about your but."

 

If you have an active university card and a 100 bucks I suggest grabbing Visual Interdev for the academic price (if you don't already have it). It's a great tool for development of the simplest active server pages all the way up to robust enterprise solutions.

If you want complete control of an active server page, there's nothing prohibiting you from merely creating a reference to your component and managing it to the bear bones in your pages... particularly if you're like me and would rather wrap any db recordset in a collection class so you can program against themes (and pretend that vb is OO) rather than having to delve into recordsets for each row that you want to play with. Visual Interdev is still a MS tool, though, so it has all of the built in wizards to get hobby oriented sites up really fast too (sites that you basically don't have to worry about user modification, etc.). In fact, you can drop a control onto a page in Interdev, point it to a database/table and then bind specific elements such as text fields or cbos to particular fields. Pretty cool stuff.

Have fun! I've worked on 1/2 dozen asp projects so if you have any questions, let me know (if I don't remember the answer, I'll just make something up ) and I'll try my best to help out.

p.s. the first question w/ a particular provider is always re: the connection string, therefore this ought to help out...

strConn = "Provider=sqloledb;Data Source=greatw;Initial Catalog=tpet;User Id=matt;Password=password;"

Nothing to interesting to note other than the 'Initial Catalog' for the specific db instance.

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"Everyone I know has a big but...

come on Simone, let's talk about your but."

 

How about writing the HTML/ASP code yourself using ActiveX Data Objects(ADO) to query SQL Server? You don't need Visual Interdev to do that. To me, that is the easiest way. Just find a ASP book that talks about querying databases. Actually, if you went to Microsoft's site and did a search on something similar to "how to query SQL Server using ASP/ADO"...you would probably get an example.

If you can code HTML and SQL, the rest is a piece of cake . I am sure you can hack your way through a little server-side VBScript with an example.

Surf

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by all means you can use a textpad or notepad or whatever to write your active server pages... but Interdev has intellisense (like VJ and VB) so it has auto-complete while you're coding... it helps out alot for type exceptions, etc. or just figuring out an API w/o documentation...

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"Everyone I know has a big but...

come on Simone, let's talk about your but."

 

I'm paying someone to do it!


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humble, but hungry.

 

DoD, I have a license for NetObjects that I'm not using anymore if you want it...I'd be more than happy to send it to ya.

It as pre-built ASP "connectors" that help generate HTML tables from databases. All you need is a database like Access and, of course, IIS installed.

It also has built-in connectors from Cold Fusion.

You are right is assuming this will help produce simple tables out of queries faster. I'd say you'd have something in hours that you could publish.

Sounds like you are going to give us your Stat tables in HTML...sounds great. Let me know if you need ANY software. I have several unused licenses, because I buy and evaluate a lot of software for my job.