John Clark
John.Clark at niagaracounty.com
Fri Jan 31 08:08:01 CST 2003
The DB is currently on our server, but the whole department is moving to an "outside" agency, and they are taking the program w/them, so I have no idea where they will be placing it. The website is currently hosted by a hosting company (imagine that), and I imagine they will keep this, but again, I don't really know for sure. I spoke w/the woman who is in charge of this in that department yesterday...she is actualy their web master...and she said that they cannot use a webform. This is because they run this data through a query and pass it into a program called "Mailers +", to do their mailings (they send out travel guides, fishing guides, etc.), and apparently they end up w/more work if they use customer typed data. The Mailers + program will kick out an address as bad, if they type out "street", "rural route", "road", etc.. It requires abbreviations. She may be shading things a bit too, because her job may be in jeopardy with this move. They already have a form on their website (http://www.niagara-usa.com), so I'm thinking it might not be that difficult. I am going to step away for now. My boss doesn't seem to be too gung-ho for me to be involved, and I'm actually swamped for the next few months. I'm going to call the guy today, and tell him that it may be possible to do, but there are issues that may prevent this. He will have to work more closely with the woman I spoke with...he has been told this by three different people, including myself, and he seems to be avoiding her. I thank everyone for their input though...as usual it was very helpful. I actually want to get into a project like this at some point, to gain the experience. Thanks again! John W Clark >>> DWUTKA at marlow.com 01/30/03 02:56PM >>> Where is your database? Is it on the hosting company's webserver, or is it local to you? If it is local to you, that may be interesting, because you'd be pushing data back to your network. Not impossible, just a pain to setup. If the database is on the webserver itself, it's a snap, using ASP (if your Hosting company provides ASP capability). Drew -----Original Message----- From: John Clark [mailto:John.Clark at niagaracounty.com] Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2003 8:27 AM To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com Subject: [AccessD] Web form data into Access97 About two years ago, I wrote a program for our Tourism department that tracks their 800 line requests. Their operators type information into this program from phone calls, messages, and their web site. They do all of this manually, which makes sense for the phone calls, but it seems that there should be a way to replace Email with a web form, and have that information piped into the program...I'll stop short of saying I know there is, because I have absolutely no experience w/this. Now, this department is being "taken over" by an "outside" agency...budget problems have prompted the removal of a couple of depts. and they are being adopted by other sources. This is supposedly a good thing for the county, so I was given as a contact to aide in the migration...basically just answering questions. I guess my boss has setup some sort of support contract w/these folks. Back to the actual question...I spoke to the new director of this agency, yesterday, and he was surprised that they enter information from Email directly. He asked if there wasn't a way to pick the data out of the Email and put it into the DB. I told him that, what they should look into was to have a form on their website, and this data could be put into the DB, w/out human intervention. I did preface this by pointing out that I did not know how to do this. Is this possible? What does it take? What does it take considering the DB is already existant and wasn't programmed for this? Also, they currently use FrontPage for their site, which is hosted by an outside provider. If it can be done, but not w/FrontPage, I just need to tell them this. As it stands now, my involvement ends with a recommendation. But, if it is doable, I am thinking of offering my services. It is just that I am so busy right now, that I don't want to get in over my head either. Thank you John W Clark _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com _______________________________________________ AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com