[AccessD] How do I answer this?

Your customer is partially right, and partially wrong.  It has become a big
trend lately, to make things web based.  There are a LOT of pros to creating
web based files.  The biggest pro is that you just need a browser, not a
specific software package to use web files.  It's also very cross platform,
so a Mac user can see the same page that a PC user does.  Then you have the
simplicity of HTML, which in and of itself is pretty nice.

Because of this trend, Microsoft has pushed harder and harder to make
simpler and more powerful web based tools.  A prime example of this is the
Office Suite.  Open a Power Point 97 presentation, and save it was a web
page.  After a multi step wizard, and several minutes later, you will have a
web page, that sorta looks like a power point presentation.  Now open a
Power Point 2000 presentation, and save it as a web page.  No wizard, and a
few seconds later you have an almost exact replica of the Power Point
presentation in HTML and script.  (Yes, it even does animation, like Power
Point, though it may be IE specific).

FrontPage is Microsoft's flagship HTML editor, though all of the Microsoft
Office suite programs can read/write HTML stuff (2000 and XP are far better
at it then 97).  FrontPage XP (and it's predecessors (to a lesser extent))
allows for data to be put on a web page from a database.  It does this using
web bots, which use the FrontPage Extensions on the webserver.  It works,
but it is a lot like an amatuer creating an Access database.  They may get
it to eventually do what they want, but it probably isn't going to be
pretty, and it is definitely going to be far from efficient.  (Not hacking
on amatuer skills, from the FP point of view, those web bots are NOT
efficient at all).

I personally develop 90% of my applications in ASP.  In fact, 95% of the ASP
stuff I develop I actually use VB 6.0 in the background, to make ActiveX
.dll's to do the actual work.  Using .dll's in the background has many
advantages.  I did a simple test (for an article I co-wrote with Susan
Harkins) that showed that with a simple code routine (counting to 10
million), a raw ASP page took 260 times longer to run the routine and
display a simple 'finished' statement, then the same code in VB, run as an
ActiveX .dll.  On the second run, the .dll version was 360 times faster!
That is because IIS servers can be setup to cache pages and ActiveX .dll's,
so they don't have to be loaded into memory when they are called for, which
sped up part of the delay in the .dll's page.

So in conclusion, yes, it is easy to put data from an Access database onto a
web page.  However, to do it right, is a whole different ball of wax!

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: Selina Iddon [mailto:selina at easydatabases.com.au]
Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2003 5:35 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: [AccessD] How do I answer this?


Hello Everyone
I've just explained to a customer I don't build web based applications, I
only develop with Access and SQL.  He has just sent an email saying:

"I bought a book on the web design for access. It looks simple enough. Why
don't you do it."

I am missing something simple out there?  Has anyone done anything like
this?

Look forward to your replies.
Thanks
Selina


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