Hi, I am new to this board and ASP. I can use Dreamweaver and write HTML, but my employer now wants a site linked to an Access website to offer information based on simple searches.

It seems ASP is the route, but what do I need to write it and view pages, is Dreamweaver MX OK?

Edited by - Larney on 20 Jul 2005 14:40:11

If you are planning starting to learn ASP then I would recommend that you do not do the dreamweaver path, but start off by using a simple text editor like notepad, because the code that dreamweaver spits out tends to be quite messy and longwinded. With dreamweaver, you can author asp sites with relatively little asp expertise, but it takes a lot longer to learn the nuts and bolts of the language using this method.

You are better off using a text editor like ultraedit or even notepad to start off with, then when you are feeling more confident, you can move up to a professional asp editor like visual studio express web edition which is currently free to download, and is a very powerful IDE.

Good luck!

On one hand I agree with Myke but on the other hand I disagree with him. With Dreamweaver you can easily create INSERT / UPDATE and Search pages and there are many developers that are only writing a few lines of code besides the DMX generated code.

It is true that DMX sometimes writes very complex code (special with database design) but when you figurred out the Standard Dreamweaver 'coding' you can speed up your coding. I would suggest you to buy a book for ASP only and this book: www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=327

<hr><b>DMXZone support manager</b><br><a href="www.kousman.nl">Kousman web resellers</a>

Thanks for the advice. Could you answer my next question.

The information I have is in an Access database, can I link to it as it is, or do I need to convert it to SQL. If so, how do I go about it.

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Thanks for the advice. Could you answer my next question.

The information I have is in an Access database, can I link to it as it is, or do I need to convert it to SQL. If so, how do I go about it.
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by the very nature of your question is obvious you have know knowledge of dynamic webdesign. ASP uses ADO to execute SQL queries from which the results can be formatted and displayed on the page. If you want a quick easy lazy fix i suggest following the MM tutorials that come with dreamweaver about how to create dynamic pages

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
Thanks for the advice. Could you answer my next question.

The information I have is in an Access database, can I link to it as it is, or do I need to convert it to SQL. If so, how do I go about it.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>

You can easily connect to an Access database over ODBC, OLEDB (Microsoft Jet Engine) or MS SQL. When you are a starter and assuming that you don't have many data to put on your website I'll suggest you to start with MS Access. It is quite easy to set up and connect to the database. Most books are also written in an Access / ASP / Dreamweaver situation in stead of MS SQL because MS SQL is quite expensive.

When Access cannot fit your needs anymore you can upsize the database very easy to MSDE (lightweight version of MS SQL) or MS SQL with the Wizard Upsize funtionality that is standard in MS Access 2003 (maybe also XP.. but I'm not sure.


<hr><b>DMXZone support manager</b><br><a href="www.kousman.nl">Kousman web resellers</a>