Extracting Data from External Database "Newbie"
tr...@allin1marketing.com
similar to http://wwwcawholesale, which has an amazing site. My site is
http://www.dallaspromotionalproducts.com. I have a supplier
http://www.foractivewear.com that has several items that I would like
to put and use in my own database. Is there a way to import this
information into access or Mysql or do I have to go another route.
Also, I don't know much, but it seems that http://www.cawholesale.com
is using his own database, but I may be wrong. If I am incorrect,
could someone tell me where to find the kind of code that they are
using to make this site work?
Any help is appreciated.
DPP
CDMAP...@fortunejames.com
Why not email them and ask them how they are storing their data? Even
better, decide what's best for what you want to do. They would
probably even tell a competitor what they are using. Note that very
few people recommend MS Access as a backend for web data mostly for
security reasons. You seem to be leaning already toward Active Server
Pages (ASP) since that's what they are using. I found the following
link to be very helpful:
http://www.asp101.com/samples/
I have programmed ASP against SQL Server with good results. I have
never used ASP against Access. BTW, I looked at the Source for the
home page of cawholesale. For ASP pages, validation can be done at the
javascript level or the ASP level. Javascript validation can be done
on the client side. This site seems to strike the right balance by
validating at the javascript level whenever possible. Free tip: using
the Session.SessionID as an identifier in a session information table
along with a user login or other user identifier obviates the need to
create a cookie on the user's machine (there are no 'Fortune cookies'
in any sites I create :-)). One of the issues seems to be cost. Using
SQL Server enabled hosting could cost as much as $15 per month. I
recommend SQL Server if $15 per month doesn't break the budget. You'll
probably save many times that much in ease of development due to more
examples being available and the natural fit of SQL Server and ASP.
Hosting on Linux or UNIX is very inexpensive but, as I said, will
likely result in higher development costs. MySQL comes with many
inexpensive hosting packages now so perhaps more knowledge will soon
become available for that option also. A different newsgroup would
probably be more suitable for answering your questions.
James A. Fortune
CDMAP...@FortuneJames.com