Hello Rick,



Hello Rick,
I would like to tell you how I got here and some of my thoughts about putting Access programs online.
Last summer (2012) I started working for my sister, a dietitian who contracts with the government. At that time, I knew a little about Word, Excel, and even less about Access. My sister had subscribed to an online database for medical professionals. She was paying over $50 a month for that program, which did a whole lot, perhaps everything except for what my sister needed. So She asked me to help, which I did using Excel, some crude Access and A LOT OF MY TIME. I found a lot of tricks from Youtube videos. That s where I found Access Learning Center. I started at Lesson 201 and worked the same customer database in your videos up to Lesson 306, and I ve watched all the lessons up to 329 but without working the examples; maybe someday I will.
I have found that there are a lot of very smart people like dietitians, physical therapists  and others who are very specialized in their own field but are really challenged in organizing their data. So they end up spending A LOT OF THEIR TIME doing what I use to spend A LOT OF MY TIME doing for my sister before I knew how to write VBA. Their problem is that they just don t know how much easier their work would be if only they had a simple Access database, customized and editable just to meet their needs.
I have found people interested in what I have done for my sister ( and now one other dietitian). When they ask me about my database, I have to ask them,  Do you have Access on your computer?  The Most common answer is  I don t know . Most people don t have  Microsoft Access, but everybody pretty much has access to the Web.
I believe if I want to expand beyond my sister and her small circle of friends, I need to get a website and then develop customized databases for clients who can then access their application online.

Anyway, Rick, I did order the ASP lessons. I don t believe I will have any problem learning the content in those lessons. (I also have your HTLM lesson 1, which I have played with somewhat). I hope that by the time I finish with those lessons, I will be able to do what I envision.


I do have one concern: That is whether ASP is becoming an outdated language. I ve heard about ASP.net. Is that becoming a superior replacement for classical ASP?
Derreck

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Reply from Richard Rost:

There's no doubt that ASP.NET is more advanced than ASP. I do plan on updating my lessons soon. The good news is that everything you learn about ASP still works in ASP.NET. It's fully backward compatible. So, sure, there are some new commands and some shortcuts you can take in ASP.NET that take a few more lines of code in ASP, but it's still a good starting point to learn server-side scripting.

Anyhow, there are two ways I would suggest you move forward. (1) If you really like your Access database and you want to sell/distribute it to other dieticians, you can just use the Access Developer Extensions to package and deploy your database without the client needing to buy Access. You won't all be able to share data (every user will have his own copy) but it sounds to me this would be OK for you.

Or (2) design a web-based database using ASP and Access (for now). This would allow you to sell the database AS A SERVICE and charge a monthly fee to access your web site. You've got no software to support - just your web site. This is the model that a lot of companies are going to now days.

Good luck with your project!