A Registration system using HTML and Microsoft Excel/Access - asp.net

My friend asked me to make a registration software for his blood donation camp. He told me that he can't host an ASP.NET or PHP page.
Also that since they'll be running the software in many systems, which may not be interconnected, they may not be able to use a Database server.
Is there a way to store/read data from an MS-Excel or MS-Access file instead of any other database?
Also that I wish to make the front end using HTML & JavaScript/JQuery.

As you problem is little bit twicky. Since your app will run on various machine so you want to develop standalone app in Html / Jquery. Also you cannot use db server bcoz of lack of connectivity. So in such scenario i will suggest you to go for Win Form app with a lightweight db like MS Access and Sqlite. Which ever you prefer. Since you are keeping Network aside so i suggest you to not use HTML/Jquery to use access or Excel as it looks logical very easy to use interop with excel but implementation is quite messy. In that time you can finalize the winform app with any of the database with lots of ease.

Related

Getting started with databases

I am currently a front end developer. I know HTML and CSS pretty well, I'm OK with jQuery and know some Vanilla JS. I have an idea for a website I want to create where I will be storing data for products (data that I will be grabbing from various websites around the web). It's basically a help me choose application where the user will go through some steps and be given some choices based on their selections. This site is nothing new, but it's more for learning purposes/portfolio work.
Most of my co-workers use ASP.NET and I've seen that you can setup a website like this using ASP.NET and the provided server controls along with C#, however, I want to take another route that allows me to do the same thing NOT using ASP.NET (C# is OK and preferred if that is possible) in that I can grab data, store data, and bind data to my page.
In addition to this, I would like to do this on the Mac.
Here's a list of things I have looked at:
MongoDB (I was really confused by the setup and didn't read anywhere that this would definitely be the solution).
AngularJS
EmberJS
BackboneJS
Several other JS frameworks
Ruby on Rails
Note about the above: Some of the above might be the solution, but I don't want to start spending time learning them only to realize a week in that this is not going to help me get to my goal.
If this post would be better suited for another stack site please let me know. Thank you.
To create a basic website with a persistence you'll need to deal with three parts the front-end (client), back-end (server) and the persistence (database). Of the things that you've listed Angular, Ember and Backbone are all front-end frameworks. They each have their own way of approaching the issue but they all work in the client facing part of the project so views, interaction and dispatching data to the backend. Rails is the only thing that you've listed that's a back-end framework, another option for the back-end if you're more familiar with JS might be Node and Express. Node allows you to build a server in JS and Express is one of the more popular Node frameworks. That section will be responsible for getting the calls for data and calls with data from the front-end and dispatching the appropriate response. Rails typically works with with a SQL database like MySQL or PostGres out of the box because Rails' active record is meant to work with SQL. Mongo is a NoSQL database and I think people are getting it working with Rails but I don't know that it's highly common. Mongo's shell is pretty much javascript and it stores data as JSON (not technically but close enough) so it's been a comfortable choice for JS developers learning back-end. Either Rails or Node can get a server up and running locally on your machine so you can work with the full architecture. So what it comes down to really is picking one of each from those sections and making them play nicely together. For your purposes I would think that the way to go would be either a basic Rails app (probably with MySQL) and using jQuery ajax calls to manage some calls from the front-end or building something with the so-called MEAN stack (Mongo, Express, Angular, Node) which is all JS and using Angulars built in http functionality to handle those calls. Hope this at least narrowed the field of research a bit. Really thats a pretty open question and there are a lot of options.
What is your webhosting site? I suggestPhpmyadmin Or Mysqldatabase You can create tables and strings where you can put the websites you wanna "grab" data from and put a little javascript in there to tell your website if blahblahnlah =blahblahblah then get id="website1"
Some clarifications:
At first, you need to distinguish between a server side language (used to program the functionality) and a database (used to store data).
C# is a language of the .net framework. Regarding websites, there's no C# without ASP.net.
There are two major groups for realizing back end solutions: PHP (market share ~ 40%) and ASP (~ 25%). PHP is a programming language, ASP.net incorporates several programming languages (mainly C# and VB.net).
Both worlds are able to connect to databases: For PHP, this is mainly MySQL, for ASP.net it is mostly Microsoft SQL server.

JSP, Tomcat & MySQL replacement?

I had little experience writing a web based inventory management system using jsp, tomcat, and db in mysql.
Ever since then, I changed my career as an embedded software engineer(so my knowledge about this topic is rather outdated), and I need to write a web format based code tracking tool with localized database and no server running like a tomcat.
So I decided to give sqllite a try since it does not require a sever running. But I am not sure what to replace a web container with. (I might be little confused here)
basically I need something like below:
1. user accesses web based interface
2. user requests code tracking or source browsing
3. something(that does not require a server running) handles request and extracts information and displays possible matching links
db will be replaced with sqlite, and no tomcat will run. But then I am not sure how I can make "something" in 3) work :(
I'd really appreciate any suggestion.

Windows Forms vs ASP.NET to create a Data Maintenance program

I am creating a application which is mainly used inside a office for data maintenance. It will be used to store data like work list, future works, reminders etc .All data will be presented to user in the form of grids. So it's all about data stored in SQL server database. There will be number of users accessing it and they modify data frequently. Also there will be so many options like an ERP program.There is no connection to internet is required for this program.
So in this case which programming language is better? Should I choose WinForms or ASP.NET? The main concentration to choose between this will be performance, ease of use, also it should support more function for grid controls etc. So which one should I choose? And what will be the advantage and disadvantage of both?
Some pointers:
WinForms
Good
No webserver to install, setup and secure
Bad
Installation of some kind required on each machine e.g .NET framwork, exe, assemblies, etc.
More difficult to rollout updates to the application
ASP.NET
Good
No installation on clients required
Can run on machines other than windows including mobile devices
Updates to the application can be published instantly to all clients
Bad
Have to use IIS or UltiDev Web Server to serve up pages
File system is more secure so reading and writing to files can be time consuming to configure
Unless you want to use jQuery and Javascript to add additional functionality to the Standard ASP.NET GridView I would say a Windows Form would be more suited, depending on the size of the data it will most likely offer better performance and you have much more control over the actual functionality of the program, rather than dealing with browser related restraints.
Not really a question for this forum... VB.Net is a Language and ASP.Net is a Framework. Do you mean should I create a client windows app or a web (intranet) app then this would depend on your strengths as the intranet option would also require HTML and possibly CSS/Javascript.

Is it possible to make a serverless client-side database program using sqlite and php?

I have a client who wants a small database program that can run on his personal computer. I've set up multiple mySQL databases in the past, and I prefer to program custom user interfaces using HTML, CSS, and PHP because it allows for a lot of customization. My question would be, is there a feasible way for me to create a client side database program using a SQLITE and HTML,CSS,PHP? Or should I consider another programming language?
*I've considered using a virtual lamp/wamp stack like XAMPP, but I was hoping to find a more efficient means.
I'm open to any ideas.
Thanks!
PHP 5.4 has a built-in webserver, which means you can develop an application which only dependency would be installing PHP on client machine. (I assume the web browser is already available)
Also, you may want to create a script (batch file) to start the server (and maybe launch the browser). SQLite support is included in default version of PHP.
http://php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver.php

How to avoid chaotic ASP.NET web application deployment?

Ok, so here's the thing.
I'm developing an existing (it started being an ASP classic app, so you can imagine :P) web application under ASP.NET 4.0 and SQLServer 2005. We are 4 developers using local instances of SQL Server 2005 Express, having the source-code and the Visual Studio database project
This webapp has several "universes" (that's how we call it). Every universe has its own database (currently on the same server) but they all share the same schema (tables, sprocs, etc) and the same source/site code.
So manually deploying is really annoying, because I have to deploy the source code and then run the sql scripts manually on each database. I know that manual deploying can cause problems, so I'm looking for a way of automating it.
We've recently created a Visual Studio Database Project to manage the schema and generate the diff-schema scripts with different targets.
I don't have idea how to put the pieces together
I would like to:
Have a way to make a "sync" deploy to a target server (thanksfully I have full RDC access to the servers so I can install things if required). With "sync" deploy I mean that I don't want to fully deploy the whole application, because it has lots of files and I just want to deploy those new or changed.
Generate diff-sql update scripts for every database target and combine it to just 1 script. For this I should have some list of the databases names somewhere.
Copy the site files and executing the generated sql script in an easy and automated way.
I've read about MSBuild, MS WebDeploy, NAnt, etc. But I don't really know where to start and I really want to get rid of this manual deploy.
If there is a better and easier way of doing it than what I enumerated, I'll be pleased to read your option.
I know this is not a very specific question but I've googled a lot about it and it seems I cannot figure out how to do it. I've never used any automation tool to deploy.
Any help will be really appreciated,
Thank you all,
Regards
Have you heard of the term Multi-Tenancy? It might be worth look that up to see if that applied to your "Multiverse" especially if one universe is never accessed by another...
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multitenancy
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479086.aspx
UPDATE:
If the application and database is the same for each client (or Tenant) I believe there are applications that may help in providing the same code/db as an SaaS application? ie another application/configuration layer on top that can handle the deployments etc?
I think these are called Platform as a Service (PaaS) applications:
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_as_a_service
Multi-Tenancy in your case may be possible, depending on client security requirements, with a bit of work (or a lot of work):
Option 1:
You could use the one instance of the application, ie deploy the site once and connect to a different database for each client. You would need to differentiate each client by URL to isolate content/data byt setting a connection string for each etc. (This would reduce your site deployments to one deployment)
Option 2:
You could create both a single instance of the application and use a single database. You would need to add a "TenantID" to each table and adjust all your code to accept a TenantID to ensure data security/isolation. Again you wold need to detect/differentiate the Tenant based on the URL to set the TenantID for the session used for every database call. (This would reduce your site and database deployment to one of each)

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