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V

vage

2[H]4U
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Jan 10, 2005
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Ok everyone, so I work as a System Administrator at this little company in Rochester, NY. They have been around for a while and things are pretty steady. About 7 years ago they purchased a software product that would allow people to go to a web address and fill out a form that would report problems to the System Admins. Over the years people developed more systems that used this software and now, basically all the internal websites are running off of it.

The problem, however, is that this software is extremely dated, has ZERO support, and causes me headaches every single day. So I have decided that during my down time, which there is A LOT of because I am only part-time and my boss wont let me do anything, I am going to completely redo it.

My question is, what would be the best language to write this in. JSP, ASP, PHP? I know I didn't give a lot of information about the uses of it, but I am basically asking which language could I use to roll this project out the fastest. Or is it pretty much 6 in 1, half dozen in the other with these options?

Also, what would my options be for building a web application instead of having people actually go to a website?
 
whichever you are most productive in, but also take into consideration what you allready have configured to run on your webserver.
 
Well see thats the thing, I don't "know" any of those languages, but I have looked over them, and what I was working with is very similar. The web server is so old that it will have to be replaced with something new that can run this technology anyways.
 
like someone said before me, it really depends on what you have installed on the server. But I would recommend PHP. It is open source and has tons of source code and such out there. I found it difficult to sort through all the ASP.NET pages when trying to find ASP pages. Javascript will probably be needed for some client side stuff so you will have a chance to learn both.

I found PHP to be very easy. Im sure you will as well.
 
Depending on exactly what the software does it can either be a simple problem or a complex one.

I wrote something that sounds similar to what you are describing with PHP for my old high school for their techs.

If you just want people to fill out a form and have it email to the techs (and the user as well if needed) then its a simple process.

If you need it to create a work order that people submit and the techs update and such, then you have to deal with databases and will need to learn a lot more.
 
If you really want to do less work just use one of the bug tracking systems like Mantis, people can go in and report issues and it will have email alerts and all the good stuff.
 
What is your environment (Webserver/OS/Database)?
If you have any other in-house development done, what language is it in?
Do you need to stay compatible with the old DB?

Personally, I'd recommend against PHP if you're not an experienced programmer. Sure it allows noobs to get working quickly - but it also makes it really easy for noobs to do noobish things.

One major point : once you decide on a language to use, after doing a few simple toy programs to get the feel for it, pick up a framework - it'll help you avoid doing a lot of the common stuff (and prevent you from doing them wrong).

...and what do you mean by "a web application instead of a website"?
 
Well I am by no means a noob programmer. I have a great deal of experience in some server side programming, javascript, java, c, c#, c++, directX, etc...

I am very confident in my ability to pick this language up quickly. The language that I was using for the current website is called ssp or Safe Server Pages (its very old and not supported anymore) which is why I want to change. I have decided to use PHP I think.

The way that the current website is setup, I already am using a database and I am also very comfortable with mySQL and MS-SQL. So this really shouldn't be too hard of a task to complete.

It is hard to explain what I mean by "Web Application." I know what I am thinking in my head, and I wish I could find a good example to show you guys. But basically, it would be almost exactly like a web page, but you don't run it in a browser? If that makes sense at all. If I can find an example I will post it here.
 
Define "during your down time". Are you paid during this downtime? If so, tenatively proceed. If not, stop right now. If you write it for free they'll expect you to maintain it for free.

Also, with all due respect, if you've never written in a language before, I would be leery of using it to start a production app. Just saying. You don't mention how complex this is - I've written error-reporting scripts in both PHP and Python before, and while they're not overly complex, stuff that goes on the live server is hardly a suitable testbed for new stuff.
 
vage said:
It is hard to explain what I mean by "Web Application." I know what I am thinking in my head, and I wish I could find a good example to show you guys. But basically, it would be almost exactly like a web page, but you don't run it in a browser? If that makes sense at all. If I can find an example I will post it here.
Click to expand...

I think the term you're looking for is "web services" - where you have a client/server application that uses HTTP/XML/etc as the communication protocol? IMHO they're not worth a whole lot - you have the complexities of distributing & keeping clients up to date combined with the hassles of HTTP's statelessness.
 
I think you need to decide the project requirements first. Sounds like you are heading down a path without a map.

I tell you what, if you use all MS stuff, run Win2k3 with ASP.NET, if you are running LINUX or some flavor run PHP.

Here is an example:

I am working on a project right now that grabs usernames out of a OU in Active directory, put it in a drop down list. You choose a name, and it searches our login database, finds the current computer they are using, and connects their computer to SMS Remote Tools.

I don't think you can do that with PHP.

I have done both and here are the differences I have seen:

PHP

Not quite as secure
Not as powerful as ASP.net
Cannot access other MS resources
easy syntax
Easy database connectivity

ASP.net

More difficult syntax(not much)
You have more access to builtin classes
.NET framework is very powerful and you can access it all :)
You can use C# or VB.NET as your language with ASP.NET
Database programming is a little bit more of a task.
 
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