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Thikasabrik

Member

Registered: 2004-02-23

Posts: 92

Any recommendations on how to implement this?

Well it's been a while since I did a great deal of programming, and now I need to quickly learn how to make a reasonably complicated app. It is a catalogue and ordering application that will be distributed on CD. Essentially it will allow customers to build up orders offline from a personalised catalog, including features such as creating order-sets which can be treated as special catalogue items.

The easiest way to make this work in a cross-platform way seems to be to include a web server on the CD that will serve a PHP/SQLite based system. The difficulty with this is inluding a web server/servers that will run straight off the CD on windows, and macos/linux if possible (Stunnix Perl Web Server is one possibility, but it costs money...). Another difficulty is in storing order-data. I want to have a fixed product catalog as well as a way of storing order information on the user's machine. This part lends itself better to something more like a java app, perhaps. Yet building a java app would make the GUI aspect a whole lot more complicated - I want to be able to print out report-style output, which would be much easier with a web-based method. If there is reasonably straight-forward way of copying databases around on a system running a PHP server and then connecting to them, then maybe my problem is solved.

Now, I do have some programming experience, but it doesn't extend much beyond VB based database apps (ASP (not .net) and Access). I would appreciate any tips or recommendations as to how to get started on the above.

PS: I have considered a Live-CD approach, but this is not acceptable because of the data persistance requirements, and also would prevent customers using the system alongside other apps, like their email client etc.

ralvez

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2005-12-06

Posts: 1,718

Website

Re: Any recommendations on how to implement this?

Perhaps you should consider using Python, with which can build a web server and at the same time communicate with the DB and even use it to write the order info in the user's machine.
Another advantage is that python is cross-platform compatible and easy to learn.

Thikasabrik

Member

Registered: 2004-02-23

Posts: 92

Re: Any recommendations on how to implement this?

Well I just had a look at what's available when it comes to python and quickly got lost due to the sheer number of web app. frameworks available. On the other hand I do think using PHP could fairly easily allow the relevant db file manipulation through the copy function etc. PHP web programming is fairly easy to grasp for me; there are plently of PHP compatible servers, including Stunnix and some other embeddable-type servers, and they provide a nice online language reference. Python ain't an HTML-embedded sripting language, and thus I don't understand how I would use it for a web-app... yet  :oops: