Web programming for a complete noob
deicist
Manchester, UK
OKay, I've never done any kind of web programming before (although I'm fairly fluent in pascal, Delphi, VB.net and can find my way around C) and I'm determined to teach myself. I want to write a simple database application that will be used for my work as a systems administrator. Basically I want:
a web page with a simple form on it, that users can submit support calls on.
A database to store these support calls, which the IT team can view and edit as they see fit.
Some simple reporting from the database.
Automatic E-mail submission, the web page should send an email to the IT team when a call is submitted,
Now, what would be the easiest way for me to do this? I'm about to start playing around with Ruby on rails, which looks quite interesting, but would something like PHP let me do what I want? As I understand it there's 3 components I need to look at:
1) A database engine: I have Access but I suspect someone is going to tell me to use MySQL or something instead? I have some basic database knowledge, but it really is basic and more theoretical than practical
2) A programming language: I'm drawing a blank on this one, I don't mind learning something new, as long as it's fairly straightforward.
3) a web server: The app would be deployed in an environment that already has access to webpages served from IIS running on server 2003, but I don't mind dabbling with Apache if that's better, and I have a server with a spare port 80 to install Apache if needs be.
I also need to learn how to tie those 3 components together. So, any suggestions / ideas / helpful hints?
a web page with a simple form on it, that users can submit support calls on.
A database to store these support calls, which the IT team can view and edit as they see fit.
Some simple reporting from the database.
Automatic E-mail submission, the web page should send an email to the IT team when a call is submitted,
Now, what would be the easiest way for me to do this? I'm about to start playing around with Ruby on rails, which looks quite interesting, but would something like PHP let me do what I want? As I understand it there's 3 components I need to look at:
1) A database engine: I have Access but I suspect someone is going to tell me to use MySQL or something instead? I have some basic database knowledge, but it really is basic and more theoretical than practical
2) A programming language: I'm drawing a blank on this one, I don't mind learning something new, as long as it's fairly straightforward.
3) a web server: The app would be deployed in an environment that already has access to webpages served from IIS running on server 2003, but I don't mind dabbling with Apache if that's better, and I have a server with a spare port 80 to install Apache if needs be.
I also need to learn how to tie those 3 components together. So, any suggestions / ideas / helpful hints?
0
Comments
Use MySQL as it's a proper relational database engine rather than a totally flat file backend like access
PHP is a snap to learn to do what you want to do mate
You can install PHP5 on IIS 6 (Win2003) very easily.