New Guy

[Guest]

My department develops and maintains many MS Access databases all of which
are front end applications for SQL databases.

All future development now has to be webbased (intranet).

It is my understanding that asp.net is a good alternative for database front
end development.

I don't know where to start in developing FrontPage applications and linking
them to SQL db's... I know this is a large question, but could you please
give me some basic direction and advise on reference material.

thanks

 

[Mark Fitzpatrick]

ASP.Net is an excellent platform for designing database front-ends. Your
application may need a level of complexity though that is above what
FrontPage is designed for. You may want to try Visual Web Developer Express.
It's a free version of a subset of tools used for Visual Studio. It may
offer a bit more flexibility for designing a full web-enabled application.
More info at: http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/default.aspx

FrontPage is a great tool, but is more focused on a standard web site, or
web site with some dynamic content. For full front-ends, you may need
something that focuses more on the programming end.

Hope this helps,
Mark Fitzpatrick
Microsoft MVP - FrontPage

 

[Tom Miller]

My department develops and maintains many MS Access databases all of which

are front end applications for SQL databases.

All future development now has to be webbased (intranet).

It is my understanding that asp.net is a good alternative for database front
end development.

I don't know where to start in developing FrontPage applications and linking
them to SQL db's... I know this is a large question, but could you please
give me some basic direction and advise on reference material.

Dear Dan,
The question I have is the scope of your development pretty
straight-forward?

I believe I understand the Access front-end can link accross a LAN to a
central Access/Jet DB engine. Are you basically trying to do/support the
same level of programming you would if you were using VBA?

If your new development mode is basically Intranet based but no more
complicated than it would be for using the Access-front end to link to the
central Access/Jet DB then you may find FrontPage to be sufficient. FP also
supports VBA as well as direct SQL coding.

Your probably going to have to learn abit of Asp to help you link things to
together but you don't necessarily have to learn and use very high powered
tools for what Access is commonly used for. Asp is a very close relative to
VBA so I don't expect you to have a serious learning curve in any case.

You may want to investigate the "Database Wizard" of FP to see how it
creates code and connects to the Jet DB engine (Access).

If your going to start using FP alot, I can't recommend to highly "Microsoft
FrontPage InsideOUT" by Jim Buyens, for whatever version of FP your using.
Yes, it talks about hooking up the Access database to a FP website.

Hope this was helpful,
Tom Miller

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