New to Web apps

Okay, i'm kind of an impatient person as far as learning wise so i kind of rush in to learning things. i just learned to design webpages through dreamweaver mx which made it rather easy. now that i have the site up i wanted to implement web apps so i wouldn't have to update the information in html daily, and rather just update a database and have an app server bring it up. okay, i have a just feel about this by reading this dreamweaver mx web development book and it kind of compares the compatibility between the OS, web server, app server, and database. i currently have windows home, downloaded ASP.NET Matrix, am using Access and my friend recommendeds learning ASP.NET and SQL. Is this the right route? I'm learning SQL through the W3school website and ASP.NET through ASP.net the website. Are these reasonable resources for beginners?
Also...this is probably the real problem that's agonizing me. i'm trying to connect my database to dreamweaver mx. i think i have my test server set through the personal web manager. i also set the DSN in the "DSN system" setting of the ODBC Administrator. In Dreamweaver MX, i created a new site and applied the site location, and set the testing server as local. i tried to create the connection by adding OLE DB connection in the application panel. i created the connection name and tried to build it under "Microsft OLE DB for ODBC drivers" and also "Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider" I then selected my database location and the test connection was fine. then when i tested the connection string it gave me a message saying "500 internal server error"... alright this has gotten overwhelming but just wanted to be a bit thorough and explaining myself that i did some research and i'm kind of hitting a wall since i am new to this language and it's new jargon to me and i'm not exactly sure what i'm reading. thanks in advance

 

In answer to your first question, my client support site is .Net with a SQL backend and it does well. My regular sites all use .Net Nuke (Corporate forced me to use it) and thats ok but makes things a little difficult. As far as your connection issues, no idea. I only use dreamweaver to edit the pages, everything else is direct communication from the Web Server -> firewall -> SQL Server.

 

Hmmm...i don't quite understand. Several resources I've checked out, began by saying i have to have some kind of connectivity with the database and in order to test the scripts I write, I would have to have some kind of testing server and it can be done locally?...still confused. Thanks for the reply.

 

We use different connection methods. ODBC is a little (or a lot) insecure so I think we switched to some sort of SSL connection method. In the old days it was just an ODBC connection to the DB. Even if it was local I would think you would still need an ODBC connection object.

 

I am a .net programmer so I think I can give you a good advice.

There isn't such as thing as learning ASP.net without learning .net.

.net is very different from just creating static sites in html, even very different from ASP or PHP, it's a real programming platform.

ASP.net is just a set of objects used when programming a web application, it only exposes certain objects, but it's mostly what it's contained in the System.web, System.web.ui, etc. namespaces.

Dreamweaver can give you the basics, but you will eventually need to write some code, you create an aspx page and when the page is required, IIS passes it to an isapi module that executes the code behind (a C#, VB.net, C++.net, etc. code file compiled into a .dll). Dreamweaver will generate some of the code for you but it won't be enough, if you need to handle some logic, security, validation etc you will need to code.

You need to understand programming, especially object oriented programming, need to be familiar with inheritance, interfaces, etc.

I would start learning one of the .net languages, personally I use C# but you might find VB.net easier to understand.

Then you can go into web applications, there are some self-pace training books by Microsoft press (like developing web application with VB.net and C#.net).

You can visit www.gotdotnet.com, they have links to tutorials, books, etc.

Another source that you will have to visit daily if you are a .net programmer is msdn.microsoft.com.

If you are serious in getting to .net, then get Visual Studio, Dreamweaver is not really designed to handle all the complexity.

If I can be of any help just ask.

 

Regarding your database error, it's difficult to know without more details, that's where you need Visual Studio because you can debug and see the details of the exception.

I would need to see the code to see what's wrong with it, you can use exception handling to find out but I don't know if the code is being generated in C# or VB.net.

does Dreamweaver create a file named page.cs or page.vb? (replace page by the name of the page you are working on).

 

Wow, sounds overwhelming. I didn't realize what I was getting into. Thanks for the thoroughness. I'm unsure of the code DW creates, but I know when creating a new ASP.net VB or C# page it saves it with the .aspx extension.
I don't know if I should dig so deep into this subject right now, I would eventually like to learn it in more detail. You see, if you can take a look at www.looseleaflounge.com one thing that I'm trying to make functional is the dates for the calender of events. I want to create some kind of script where it can draw out the events for that specific date from several databases. Also be able to edit, and add new events, etc. I've just picked up HTML and web designing through Dreamweaver and now trying to pick up SQL. It just seems too much just to try to implement these funtions. Well, I'm one of those types who likes to know what goes on behind the scenes so I'm just going to have to dig my shoes in the dirt, but is their some easier way to go about this or is it really this harsh?
Thanks, again for the help. It's really appreciative!!!

 

it's not really overwhelming if you are into programming. In fact, it's a lot easier to get some things done than with ASP or PHP for example. ASP is easier but I wouldn't recommend to waste time on it since it's an obsolete technology.

What you are trying to do is very easy in .net, I am not familiar with web matrix but it could probably let you do it without writing much code. As long as you don't have to mess around with security, caching, session state and stuff like that it probably would do the job well, but you might need to add some code.

possibly Dreamweaver writes the code inside the aspx file, that's an option although I don't like it.

Regarding your database problem, it might be a permissions problem, when you create the database connection you are doing so as the user is logged on, so it's ok, but when the ASP.net application tries to do it, it's with the user ASPNET, that has very limited privileges, you would need to give the ASPNET user access to the dbf file, you have to right click the file, select security, then you have to locate the aspnet user and assign it at least read and write provileges. Do not give it rights over another file.

Another important thing, you can only test an asp.net application locally if you have IIS running on your computer. You can't just double click a page as with html. Visual Studio woldn't let you even start if it doesn't have access to IIS, I don't know what dreamweaver does but it needs to have access to it to test the file.

 

for an editor.. try
www.sharpdevelop.com

 

Regarding what you want to do (get a list of events from a database depending on the day the user clicks or today I guess), it's not difficult to do if you know what you are doing, but basically you would need to setup your calendar as a calendar server control (included with .net) and attach a click event handler, you would know through the evenhandler's argument which day was clicked and then you can pass it as a parameter to your query, there are more efficient ways to do this but would mean to dig deep into .net. I am not sure how you define event handlers using dreamweaver, I know how to do that in visual studio or from code.
Another options would be to attach an anchor tag (<a href=...>) to another aspx page, passing a querystring with the day, month and year clicked, something like <a href="otherpage.aspx?day=05&month=04&year=2005></a> and in this other page, read the querystring and query the database. It's not very efficient but it's the way you would do it in classic asp, would require less coding that is difficult to understand (you don't need event handlers) but you still need to know how to read the querystring and how to query the database from code.

to read the querystring you can user Request.Querystring["day"], and so on. to query the database is a little more complicated but maybe dreamweaver would let you build that.

 

I never got a chance to thank all you guys for the advice. Been a bit busy and had to put this aside. I'll have free time to explore the realms of this subject soon! finally. Again, thanks alot for all the advice. I'm sure I'll be back here soon after indulging myself in one of the programmer's learning books