Search and Access database via a website?

TITLE WAS SUPPOSED TO READ: an* Access database

Is there an un-extremely complex/difficult way to be able to search (NOT edit or add to) an Access database via a website? Or perhaps turn the database into a webpage? I notice that you can go to File > Export... > and export is as .html. Would that help me?

I am databasing plant specimens in Access (at a herbarium, if anyone is familiar with that), and I need to be able to make it so people at other universities can go to our webpage and look at what we have. They don't need full control, just viewing rights. Is there such a thing that someone who only knows HTML can do?

Thanks!

 

If you can export the database into an HTML file that should work... I mean, in this case, it wouldn't really still be a "database", it would be all of the data from the database being displayed on a webpage, but from what you are describing that would be better all around than trying to manage an actual database. If it doesn't matter who sees it(no secrets or anything) and all other people need to be able to do is view, and you aren't going to be updating the database every 5 minutes, this would probably be the simplest route.

If you did a lot of updates it may be easier to have some write you a small script and have the webpage display the contents of the database so that every time you update the database the webpage is also updated, but this will add several levels of complexity, the biggest probably being security. Just exporting the database as a web page and uploading it to the web server avoids database security issues all together.

You can see what it looks like(the exported web page(html file)) by exporting it, noting the location you export it to, and then simply double clicking on the file. It should open the file up in the browser and you'll be able to see what it looks like. Let me know if it works for you and if it doesn't I may be able to help you figure out why it's not.

Hope this helps.

 

That features seems to work, but the file size for the HTML file is over 60MB. Any way to reduce that?

 

Unless there are optimization options, I doubt that you can without manually editing it.

60mb is huge though.. Are we talking about just one HTML file here? No pictures or anything?

I've built a 39 page website.. Including all of dreamweavers extra files and folders, all of the website files and folders, the html files, the css files, the js files, and all of the pictures, totalling 186 files and like 17 folders comes to 2.48 MB...

See... an html file is just a plain text file with a .html extention... to be 60mb... dang, that is a lot of text. I guess it depends on the complexity of the formatting and how the html generator generated the code.

Can you export it as anything else? Maybe a csv file? I'm thinking that maybe you could run that file(assuming it was any smaller) through a different generator that produced cleaner, more efficient code. Or you could just offer that file for download.

 

I'm not sure what the HTML file looked like... the computer in the lab is quite old (256 MB of RAM and a Celery) so it froze when I tried to open it up. I'm gonna stick it on my jump drive and bring it to the house next week and see what it looks like. The version of Access there is also quite old (2000, I believe). A newer version of Access might make a better file. I'll update on Monday. Offering the file for download might be an option, too.

Thanks!