Dear Richard,

Having gone through the ASP lessons, i am now convinced that i can rebuild my entire Access db to be used on the web. I have a couple of questions though. Even an assurance at this stage that its possible or not for the questions below is enough. I will get the detailed answers in due course.
1. I use my db to check if Ms Excel is installed on a computer and then generate graphs. Can i do this using ASP? Can i "talk" to other programs installed on the user's computer from the web? or is there an inbuilt/better way to create graphs?
2. I have several "before update" events as part of data quality checks during data entry. I also have "after update" events like for the cascading comboboxes. can i use ASP to catch these events? I dont want to wait before the user clicks the "Submit" button before he/she gets the feedback. On some webpages, i have seen that as i enter my password for instance, the strength of the password is checked as i type in. Can i do this also?
5. Export: will it be possible for users to export data say into Excel, text or mdb file formats from the website?
6. Queries; when i upload my db, will i be able to utilise my queries? or i have to write SQL statements for each one of them?
7. Forms and reports in my access db: i suppose this is impossible! or may be i might be wrong!

To many questions. But once again, i will appreciate your guidance.
Thank you!

MICAH

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Reply from Richard Rost:

1. Nope. As a security measure, ASP code runs only on the SERVER. It basically generates dynamic pages and sends them to the browser. It has no idea what's on the user's computer, and has no access to files on the user's desktop. BROWSER-based languages like JavaScript that run in the browser have a LITTLE more control, but they still can't access outside files like you want them to. Basically, the user would have to say "yes, I have Excel."

Now as far as making charts and graphs, if you're only making simple bar/line charts, we could probably figure something out that's not too hard. I built something a few years ago for a client to show a simple sales chart using bars. It was just a matter of resizing images that were colored rectangles. I know there are some third-party, ASP-based graphic and charting plugins you could purchase to make pretty charts (pies, lines, etc.) on your web site if that's what you really need.

2. That's JavaScript. Again, it's a browser-based language that you can use to verify form data BEFORE the user hits SUBMIT (you can also use events in ASP.NET, but I prefer JavaScript myself). Yes, I'll be making some JavaScript lessons in the near future. If not, I can show you how to code this. It's not hard.

Did I miss 3 and 4?

5. You can generate a TXT (or other) file on the server using ASP and then provide that to the user as a link that they can then click on and download, yes. This is how, for example, you can download your transaction history from your bank or Paypal.

6. You can use the queries in your MDB/ACCDB back-end file, yes.

7. No can do. I wish this was possible. Microsoft is trying to make this a possibility with Sharepoint, however as of this time, Sharepoint is really only good for SMALL groups of semi-trusted people (intra-company databases, for example). I wouldn't use it for a public database.