Price list maintenance.

[Danny @ GHP]

Bear with me please, I'm new to web design...

I know how to use variable substitutions in FrontPage2000 but I want to add
prices of 1000's of items which would take some time and be clumsy to
maintain.

From our company database it is very easy to export to an Excel spreadsheet
a list of item codes with prices. It then takes very little effort to tidy
that list to just codes and prices, which is all I need.

Is there a simple way to reference specific cells in the spreadsheet and
have FrontPage substitute these references with actual values when
publishing to the web?

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

After exporting to Excel, then import into an Access Database, then use the
FP database component to display, edit, etc. Your site must be hosted on a
Windows IIS server with ASP and Access support and FP extensions.

--

==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, Forums, WebCircle,
MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Tom Gahagan]

From our company database it is very easy to export to an Excel spreadsheet
a list of item codes with prices. It then takes very little effort to tidy
that list to just codes and prices, which is all I need.

You should be able to skip the excel step. If you have the info already in
the database.... just use that info.

What type of database is the info in?

Best to you....
Tom Gahagan

 

[Danny @ GHP]

Thanks for the quick reply. What you're suggesting sounds a little
complicated.

One page lists 128 items subdivided into 22 categories with prices for each
item. I'm guessing that would create 128 separate database accesses each
time the page is viewed/refreshed on the web.

If I have to copy the entire database onto the web server it wouldn't fit
within our allocated space. I don't think we can have any outside links into
our database (ie: has to be from this building)



Ideally I want to have HTML code like this on the design-side

<p>Price of item xxxx is £<get price of xxxx from database></p>

and have it converted to the following when published to the web

<p>Price of item xxxx is £12.36</p>

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

For the page with 128 items, depending on how you database is structures,
could be a single query to the database. You would only need to have the
fields available that you want to have displayed in the database.

Example, see:
http://www.dbmarine.com
There are about 5000 products in the Access database. Select a category,
such as Communication on the home page, then select View All and you will
see the category listed by Brand/Mfg, then Category.

--

==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
WEBMASTER Resources(tm)

FrontPage Resources, Forums, WebCircle,
MS KB Quick Links, etc.
==============================================

 

[Kevin Spencer]

Hi Danny,

Yes, it does sound complicated. Like many things involving automation, it
may be complicated to set up, but in the long run will save you beaucoups of
your time and talents to maintain. For example, you want to list the prices
of items that you sell. What happens when a price changes? If you access the
catalog database on your web site, you have to spend some time setting up
database-connective ASP pages to display it. However, from that point on,
you can forget about the web site and pages that display catalog
information; all you have to do is keep your database updated.

So, how much is your future time worth to you?

--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
..Net Developer
Microsoft MVP
Big things are made up
of lots of little things.

 

[Danny @ GHP]

Thanks to all for replies. Time for me to go away and do some more reading
and learning.

If you hear someone banging their head against a wall it'll be me having a
quiet read.