Need help from the database savvy

What language/software would I need for this?

[jleane]

Hiya! I have a database of about 100 name meanings that I compiled myself in Excel. It has 4 collumns currently - the name itself, its origin (i.e English, Hebrew etc), its gender and its actual meaning.

For example:

Jonathan Hebrew M "Gods gift"

Basically I want to upload this database to my website, and have a form so users can look up the information themselves. I.e they enter "Jonathan" into a textbox, submit it and get taken to a page with its origin, gender and meaning. Can anyone point me in the right direction regarding software/programming languages etc?

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Any language and database will do, really. What your host provides will be the deciding factor. If you have a linux host, you'll probably end up with PHP and MySQL. If you have a Windows host, it'll most likely be ASP and Access.

The choice of database and programming language is pretty much irrelevant concerning what you want to do.

[jleane]

Thanks Zaphod (RIP Douglas Adams btw). Strictly speaking is asp easier to learn then php? I've only done some BASIC programming and dont want to jump into the deep end.

[txbakers]

they are both pretty easy in the basic stages, which sounds like what you need.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

PHP is more like C, and ASP is more like Basic, so...

[renee]

if you can, stay with php/mysql and away from asp/access. i started with asp/access and eventually migrated to php/access so this recommendation comes from experience, the hard way!

[jleane]

Hi Renee, what specifically motivated you towards PHP? I've noticed most of the hosts I have heard good things about only offer PHP so I was considering dropping ASP. Slight modification to my question though - which would be better at handling large databases? Ones with 40,000 entries or so.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

40,000 records hardly qualifies as a large database. Access can handle that without any trouble whatsoever. It's the number of active connections to the database that's the bottleneck, which can be averted by switching to SQL Server.

Both SQL Server and MySQL can handle millions of records per table, so there's no real reason to choose either based on possible database size.

Your choice would be determined by the programming language, and that's a personal choice.

[txbakers]

if you can, stay with php/mysql and away from asp/access

This is purely a personal bias.

I've been using ASP/mySQL for years without problems, and like it very much.

They both work.

[MatrixBrains]

Hi,

I have two questions -

1) Is mysql compatible with asp.net?
2) what is the step by step online way to learn mysql

Regards,
MB

[txbakers]

1) yes
2) www.mysql.com and lots of books on database design.

[MatrixBrains]

Hi txbakers, Thanks! for both the answers.

Regards,
MB