Web Designer needed / database connections

[Ma]

Hello

A relative of mine needs to connect a database to her website - having problems at the moment,can anyone assist?

[mattster]

Do you know what database she is trying to connect?

Matt

[Ma]

Well she has desined a website already and is trying to connect Ms Access, however she is reading up on SQL. Do you want a number to call her?

[mockney piers]

I wouldn't recommend access frankly, it's not very good on multi-user if anything more than 50 want to use the site at once.

Is she hosting it herself? If not then very few ISPs (internet service providers) will support it either as it doesn't sit very well on IIS (microsoft's web server) and most tend to go unix/apache anyway.

MySQL is usually the way for internet sites and is completely free too. Any idea what she used to create the site?

PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, ruby on rails etc?

Let me know if too much techy speak.

[Ma]

She requires people to login in, therefore will need a database behind so that the information can be pulled from here.

how do you connect, though?

[Administrator]

Moving this to the lounge as it's not really East Dulwich related

[Ma]

Okay thanks, I was wondering where it went!(tu)

[Ma]

Okay thanks, I was wondering where it went!(tu)

[Mark]

(techie talk warning)

I'll second Mockney on that, if they have a website already try and use MySQL as the database as I find it's brilliant for websites (this forum uses it). Transfer the data over from Access into MySQL if possible and use just the latter as a database, although if the data has to be in Access then she could set up an ODBC connection between the two databases. Not particularly sexy but it'll work.

As to how to connect using PHP and MySQL you can use mysql_connect() function to say something like:

have a read of something like this http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/phpmysql

Feel free to get them to send me a Personal Message if they need more help

[mockney piers]

Mark's given you some real code, mine was more generic, but hope we've somehow helped

*edited due to mark writing much more useful answer*

Well no real simple answer.

Basically you need a web server to run some sort of scripting language. PHP seems to be the most common on t'internet.

Then you need a grasp of this language in order to take the info posted by the web user and put it in a database.

The connection isn't physical (well it is, but I'm not helping) it's done using software concepts.

So she'll need to do something like

connectionString = "stuff thatdescribes databse type and place"

putDataInDatabaseCommand = "INSERT INTO userDetails VALUES (%s, %s)" % username, userpassword

conn = DBConnection(connectionString, username, password)

cmd = DBCommand (putDataInDatabaseCommand)

conn.execute (DBCommand)

and this will be executed by the web server.

Does any of this make any sense?

[Huguenot]

It sounds more like your friend is trying to create a list (e.g. shop contents) or something and wants people to be able to look up what she's put in the database?

Is that right?

[mockney piers]

In which case make it

takeDataoutDatabaseCommand = "SELECT this, that FROM shopping_list WHERE userName = %s" % username

[nutty]

and there was me thinking this one the one forum I browsed at work that wouldn't have techie talk on it :)

[mockney piers]

I know what you mean nutty, i feel like i've sullied it somehow ;)

[capt_birdseye]

Yeah, not what I want to read about when I've been fighting with ASP.NET GridViews all day. (6)

[mockney piers]

LOL, you have my sympathy cap'n !!