mjames — Fri, 05 Oct 2001 22:58:15 +0000

Check out SitePoint.com. They are offering a book suited to both beginners and advanced people looking for information on how to build a database-driven site. That stuff is incredible.

Mark Hensler — Fri, 05 Oct 2001 05:28:55 +0000

You can use PHP on a UNIX box and connect to an Access database. You need to install some ODBC drivers. I have not read any further, but you can here.

How to Run a Web Page from a database

rline — Fri, 05 Oct 2001 03:03:17 +0000

Thanks for your replies.

I'm running on a unix server, with cgi capabilities. So does this mean I can or can't run an access mdb database? If I can, is it as simple as uploading it? If all that is true, you're saying I still need something like perl or php to interact with the data?

Sorry if I seem ignorant, but I am...

Peter J. Boettcher — Thu, 04 Oct 2001 13:41:27 +0000

PHP & MySQL are the way to go if you're currently hosted on a non-windows server otherwise they are definately not the way to go.

There's a few ways you can go if you're trying to do this for free:

1) If you have Access you can throw an .mdb file on your site.

2) If you're comfortable with XML and the database is simple and small you could store it in an XML file.

3) A simple text file (not recommended, most hosts probably won't give you the right permissions to write to a file anyways)

Having said that you're still going to need some sort of server-side technology to interact with the database (ASP/PHP/CF/Perl/etc).

Busy — Thu, 04 Oct 2001 03:17:29 +0000

PHP and MySQL seem to be the way to go these days, there are some free hosts that offer both and others that just offer PHP, depending on your needs you can just use PHP and include the stuff you would of used in the database in a text file as I'm finding out.

The other guys and gals may have more info, I'm still in the "L" plate class of databases but getting there