Developing a database driven site

Cork Skate

Lads, just wanna ask if any could direct me in the right direction.

I want to develop a site with a database in the background.
I am fine with HTML but i understand that is not good enough.
SQL and Php is what keeps popping up ? i have no experience with either but will tackle it none the less.
Can someone tell me the best way to start on this ? Should i develop the database first then the front end or the site first and then the database, or both ... you know what i mean !!

Anyway lads, any help would be great !!

aidan_walsh

The first thing you need to do is decide what you want the site to be capable of. Do you want to create articles via the web, etc.

Next, you havew to design the database around this., i.e. what tables are going to be related to what. You might want to look into some of the theory of database design here, for example Normal Forms, and primary and foreign keys.

During this same time you can develop the design of the site, though it is best practise to have the adtabase out of the way and finalised first so that you know exactly what you are designing a frontend for. This will be a combination of HTML\XHTML, CSS and PHP.

Some Links to help:
"Language" Tutorials
SQL, PHP, XHTML, CSS

Practises Tutorials:
Normalising Databases

Cork Skate

doodle_sketch wrote:

The first thing you need to do is decide what you want the site to be capable of. Do you want to create articles via the web, etc.

Doodle ... thats great.
No ... no articles, if you think of it as a database of bands. Singer/drummers etc. may all move around to different bands so it would be a database to keep track of that.

Next, you have to design the database around this., i.e. what tables are going to be related to what. You might want to look into some of the theory of database design here, for example Normal Forms, and primary and foreign keys.

If i say, for example a singer, i'd list the types of music he likes, years experience etc. ... all that detail, all dependent on the singers name i.e. not unique to that singer.

So i'd want to have someone search/browse and click on singers name and then see all the details and maybe a picture or a small sound clip or whatever.
Would that be the same page for every singer, i.e. results page/table
It would be a different format for a band i.e. different details like no. of members, touring, albums etc.

During this same time you can develop the design of the site, though it is best practise to have the database out of the way and finalised first so that you know exactly what you are designing a frontend for.

Yeah, that makes sense to me, waiting until all is ready. I'd probably do that.

This will be a combination of HTML\XHTML, CSS and PHP.

Some Links to help:
"Language" Tutorials
SQL, PHP, XHTML, CSS

Practises Tutorials:
Normalising Databases

The CSS's are fine and the XML i know of (HTML is fine but XML, are there different attributes, as in .. do they vary much?), Php ... i'll have to get stuck into and MySQL, i just downloaded and have the manual, its a start and we'll see have we go

The normailisation site is good, cleared it all up ... my site will only have on thing and all it details and some foregin keys, i.e. A band ... and all its details, band members (primary keys in another record), and gigs (primary keys in another record) etc. .... it would be good to be able to click on the foreign keys and then see detail about a band member etc. and maybe then click on previous bands that that member was in (if you know what i mean)


I also want the ability for someone to log on and add details via the web i.e. new singer, fill in data and hit submit and this gets added to database.

What do you think anyway, is it an impossible task for a novice ??

Divine

For you? Definately Id say!

JustHalf

Cork Skate:
Do you have any programming experience?

If you do, I'd stay away from PHP; that lanuage offends me

But we need to get an idea of your programming experience so we can give you a good idea of where to start.

talos

JustHalf wrote:

Cork Skate:
If you do, I'd stay away from PHP; that lanuage offends me

Why would you say so?

is_that_so

Why is PHP so offensive? MySQL and Php go hand in hand. Made for each other goes the blurb. :cool:
PHP is server side and if you have any Perl/CGI experience this might do you as well, Advantage is that it is all free and reasonably easy to pick up.
Make sure your ISP lets you run cgi and any mail servers etc. you need to run on your site.

These are my suggestions

Good luck with it

PHP/MySQL - front end can be what you like. As far as I know PHP has XML support in it

CGI(PERL)/MySQL - You need to know Perl and DBI. DBI is quick and easy to code for DB interaction. Front end can be done as a combination of perl/html/XML pages or whatever you want.

ASP/ASP.Net and any MS DB( not Access !!). Handy if you are good on VB or similar. You can also get DB driver for MySQL.


And if you want to spend money ( lots! ) on a DB get Oracle - which also allows you to look at JSPs

I remember attempting to use a "DB" of sorts for Macromedia, although I think it was Director. More specifically aimed at Chat tools. Good luck if you try that. Convoluted syntax is not the word for it


Ultimately KISS .


"Get it to do well what it does all the time"

JustHalf

PHP annoys me more several reasons, but the main ones are:

The language looks like it just fell together as people threw more and more functionality into the base language; it's inconsistent. Compare this to Perl, a language that has been designed, and one that is consistent.

PHP is sloppy as heck; it seems to be intended to rapidly prototype applications, but most apps seem to end up as being the messiest code possible. I was involved in a project a while back that had to work on making a cross-language session management system. SquirrelMail, a major PHP app we were using, had such horrible code that we decided it would be quicker to use PHP sessions across everything; the time taken to hack SquirrelMail to use Apache sessions or custom sessions would take longer than we had to complete.

A great read here:
http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2002/papers/html/php/index.html

A lot of people say "Ah, a lot of PHPs problems were fixed in PHP5"; but PHP5 breaks a lot of major PHP apps (phpBB2 for one, !!!) and setting up PHP4 and PHP5 interpreters on a single host is such a pain in the ass that you're pretty much stuck with PHP4.

I'm not willing to discuss this any further here, as it will take this thread off both the topic and a cliff. But in short, PHP sucks and Perl rocks. A new thread would be fine

Cork Skate

Sorry for not replying sooner lads.

Programming experience ... here goes.

C (fairly alright at it, have done anything too elaborate)
C++ (very little of this to be honest)
VB (alright at it, again not major really)
HTML (no worries)

SQL ... have written a few queries but thats about it, i'd regard myself as a novice.

Have gone to MySQL site and downloaded MySQL 4.1 and getting the manual bound.

Php ... i have got my hands on a fairly hefty book.


Lads, I have WinXP at home and have a hard-disk (F) spare. I dont have a server .... is there anything i can do to simulate a server on the spare drive ??

Again ... any help would be great lads !!

aidan_walsh

Download and install Apache, then PHP and MySQL. No need to simulate a server when you can run one.

Cork Skate

doodle_sketch wrote:

Download and install Apache, then PHP and MySQL. No need to simulate a server when you can run one.

Cheers Doodle, can i install Apache on Windows ??

aidan_walsh

Cork Skate wrote:

Cheers Doodle, can i install Apache on Windows ??

At the risk of having to hold your hand through the whole thing, yes. Download the Windows binaries and install using these guidelines.

Cork Skate

doodle_sketch wrote:

At the risk of having to hold your hand through the whole thing, yes.

Download the Windows binaries and install using these guidelines.

I'll let you know how i get on !!