Z-Nerd
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How to decide what technologies to use writing a web app
I need to take a Windows application which is basically a front end to a database and turn it into a Web based application.
It will need to ....
show tables in a grid
show rows in a "dialog" for editing
show query rows in a read only form with optional related photos
show more than one of the above at the same time
show Google Maps with surrounding UI to customize it
have a UI to select what is shown (now menus and toolbars)
select and send files to the web server for bulk import of data
It is currently an MFC/C++ MDI application.
I have some experience with HTML, fetching files from the web, etc but am otherwise a web dev virgin.
How do I select a server database (I know SQL Server Express but the 'real' versions are very expensive). MySQL is expensive too for commercial use. Are there good free databases?
I know some JavaScript, what other client side tools do I need.
On the server side, I know Perl pretty well and notice it wins most performance tests, but others (PHP, Ruby, Python) seem popular too. I have done a little work with C#/.NET.
Web sever performance is important, the more connections it can handle puts off adding more servers.
Are there tools, frameworks, etc that I need to get? Are there some great books to read?
Should I be thinking AJAX, HTML5, what is CSS?
There will be multiple customer sites using the app, each customer can have more than one user. Should there be one database with customer ID in each row and then use "WHERE" to keep them separate or should each customer get it's own database? Assume that each user will have 50 MB of data on average, maxing out at about 250 MB
I have the skills to learn the new technologies, but at this point I need to make the decisions that I can live with, but don't have the skill to do so at this time. This is a classic case of when I finish I will be qualified to start.
How does one get started in the right direction? Feel free to also answer those questions that I was not yet smart enough to ask.
Ready to jump off the cliff, need to know which cliff.
TomZ
It will need to ....
show tables in a grid
show rows in a "dialog" for editing
show query rows in a read only form with optional related photos
show more than one of the above at the same time
show Google Maps with surrounding UI to customize it
have a UI to select what is shown (now menus and toolbars)
select and send files to the web server for bulk import of data
It is currently an MFC/C++ MDI application.
I have some experience with HTML, fetching files from the web, etc but am otherwise a web dev virgin.
How do I select a server database (I know SQL Server Express but the 'real' versions are very expensive). MySQL is expensive too for commercial use. Are there good free databases?
I know some JavaScript, what other client side tools do I need.
On the server side, I know Perl pretty well and notice it wins most performance tests, but others (PHP, Ruby, Python) seem popular too. I have done a little work with C#/.NET.
Web sever performance is important, the more connections it can handle puts off adding more servers.
Are there tools, frameworks, etc that I need to get? Are there some great books to read?
Should I be thinking AJAX, HTML5, what is CSS?
There will be multiple customer sites using the app, each customer can have more than one user. Should there be one database with customer ID in each row and then use "WHERE" to keep them separate or should each customer get it's own database? Assume that each user will have 50 MB of data on average, maxing out at about 250 MB
I have the skills to learn the new technologies, but at this point I need to make the decisions that I can live with, but don't have the skill to do so at this time. This is a classic case of when I finish I will be qualified to start.
How does one get started in the right direction? Feel free to also answer those questions that I was not yet smart enough to ask.
Ready to jump off the cliff, need to know which cliff.
TomZ
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Ya i am talking about client side, it is very much useful and have lot of features and interative technology. And many uses the same :-)
ASKER
This didn't answer alll of my questions, but was a good start, thanks
ASKER