ASP and SQL ?

[Tinaa]

Hi,

i will appreciate alot if any one can help me and give me a detailed answered and references. cause i realy need a help, and thank you .
Actualy im doing my final project which is a small e-commerce website using ASP technology and SQL for database.
The site will have dynamic pages and a shopping basket, in addition of a login .
I have Win XP Professional.
my question is ( Please note that i dont want a very complex site, just normal standard site , as the website will have less then 50 items, and it wont be for real customer to visit it and shop, it will be as a real website e.g www.pcworld.com but just for my project, sure i will host it for 2 months so the lecturors test it)
my questions are (please if u can answer 1 by 1 in more details and references)

1- what i must have on my website? shopping basket and login, and what else? do i need to have online payment!! but i dont have a merchant account! whats simple ALTERNATIVE way?

2- is it good to choose ASP and Sql for such website?

3- Shall create asp pages using Dreamweaver 2004 or what? if any other from where i can get it? and which version?

4- where can i get SQL or what do i need to create the Database? can i have them in Access then convert them to SQL or much better to create them on SQL? which SQl version i need to use? i saw many SQL stuff but couldnt understand what is for what or which is to use!!

5-what kind of connection should be between ASp and SQL and where to get the driver or how to set it? any reference?

6-coding a shopping basket is hard for a student like me! where can i get a shopping basket and set it on my website? any good 1? any guide or reference tells you how to set/install it!!

7- any pre-caution for creating a login and session!! or any guide?

8-do i need a catalogue for the items? does it make my website more pro and give me a first class mark? and from where to get it?

9- how can i sort out the online payment or alternative methods?

10-what about emails, when the website sent for the customer an email regarding his registeration or shopping! how to set this or what do i need?

11-where can get a guide and very detailed information regarding how to set up a website using ASP and SQL with shopping basket!, any website, reference, guide, forum, or anything that guide me step by step?

12- what program i must use for ftp the hosting company!

13- which hosting company i must choose? that it is running what! and any recommended hosting company!! (with an efficient technical support! coz im clueless about hosting and all those stuffs).

14- can i test the website on my pc or not , if not then how to fix anything wrong when i upload my website to the hosting company, and how to identify the errors?

15- and finaly if anybody got any information that helps me please feel free to share it coz i realy wants help.

Thank you very much for the help.

Tina T.
[e-mail]

[samaru]

1- what i must have on my website? shopping basket and login, and what else? do i need to have online payment!! but i dont have a merchant account! whats simple ALTERNATIVE way?

Yes, you need those and a way to manage inventory/sales/customer info. As far as an alternative way, to emulate a true shopping cart, you need a merchant account, so I don't think there is another way. One that I know of anyways. The money that customers give you through their credit cards has to be dumped in an account, and that is usually the merchant account. If I were you, I would state to whomever was judging the project that I would be creating a shopping cart without the payment process.

2- is it good to choose ASP and Sql for such website?

As far as ASP, if it was five years ago, then maybe. I would not recommend starting a fresh application in ASP unless you had a company who uses strictly Microsoft solutions and already had applications or premade code that was in ASP. Microsoft is putting 100% of their effort in ASP.NET and within time, ASP software will be legendary software. There's tons of stuff you can find for ASP.NET languages, from free code and articles. It's quite popular, I'm sure you've heard of it. ASP.NET is a framework of tools and languages that's used to create web applications. You can select from the most popular languages to create web apps in, like C# in VB.NET, but you have to understand object oriented programming. Personally, I think the learning curve is steeper than PHP.

What do I recommend? Well, personally, I recommend PHP. The ratio that I see of shopping carts between .php and .aspx (ASP.NET) is about 10:1. I just don't see many. ASP.NET is better used in enterprise applications. I'm not saying that doing a shopping cart in ASP.NET is bad, but that it's easier to do it PHP. Also, you'll find that there's more resources for PHP than ASP.NET because it's been around longer. I don't want this to get into a PHP vs. ASP.NET debate so I'll just stop here.

Let me just summarize. For your needs, I recommend PHP. It's easier to learn than an ASP.NET language, can be optimized to be just as fast, and has tons of resources out there on the net that you can use. The reasons why I don't recommend ASP is because it's slower than PHP, not been updated for years (PHP still gets constantly updated), and has function library that's no where as big as PHP's. This is just to name a few. Compare the number of functions in ASP http://www.haneng.com/FunctionSearch.asp?s= with the number of functions in PHP http://www.php.net/quickref.php. Those functions are native to the PHP interpreter. To emulate some of these functions in ASP you'd have to create your own custom function, which would take time, be slower because it's not native, or create your own dll in C++ and then have to create an object in memory to call that dll, just to have the same functionality as some of the functions PHP provides. Not worth it.

3- Shall create asp pages using Dreamweaver 2004 or what? if any other from where i can get it? and which version?

For ASP I definitely recommend Dreamweaver 2004. You can use Visual InterDev or Visual Studio.NET if you have the money to pay for them. Those, however are the best tools to write ASP applications in. You can try FrontPage, but I know that some versions of FrontPage modify your code when you go into design mode, which is annoying. There's ASP editors out there that are free, just do a google search for "ASP IDE" or "ASP Editor" or "ASP GUI."

4- where can i get SQL or what do i need to create the Database? can i have them in Access then convert them to SQL or much better to create them on SQL? which SQl version i need to use? i saw many SQL stuff but couldnt understand what is for what or which is to use!!

If you decide to go with PHP, use MySQL. As far as "SQL," I take it you mean SQL Server? "SQL" is a standard language to manipulate data in databases. "SQL Server" is the database server made by Microsoft. I take it you meant that. You can make your tables in Access then easily import that database into a database in SQL Server through wizards. You can download a trial of SQL Server 2000 from Microsoft's web site: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/trial/default.asp
I've had a good experience with SQL Server 2000. Lots of companies use it, and it's on the enterprise level. Microsoft is hated more than Satan by some, so there are lots of people who are out to defile anything they create. Be sure to also install the latest service pack.

5-what kind of connection should be between ASp and SQL and where to get the driver or how to set it? any reference?

The easiest connection would be ODBC. Go here to see how to do it:
http://www.w3schools.com/ado/ado_connect.asp

6-coding a shopping basket is hard for a student like me! where can i get a shopping basket and set it on my website? any good 1? any guide or reference tells you how to set/install it!!

For PHP, you'll find an infinite amount of them. For ASP, not as much. The best resource for code for ASP, is as http://www.aspin.com. If you want a PHP or ASP shopping cart go to Google and look up "PHP shopping cart" or "ASP Shopping cart" - most have instructions how to set it up.

7- any pre-caution for creating a login and session!! or any guide?

Check this out http://www.aspin.com/func/search?tree=aspin&qry=login&cat=
http://www.asp101.com/samples/login.asp
Some other sample code in ASP: http://www.asp101.com/samples/index.asp

8-do i need a catalogue for the items? does it make my website more pro and give me a first class mark? and from where to get it?

Definitely. It's a feature I see on a lot of shopping carts.

9- how can i sort out the online payment or alternative methods?

This question might get involved. First let me know if you do decide to implement the online payment process.

10-what about emails, when the website sent for the customer an email regarding his registeration or shopping! how to set this or what do i need?

You need an SMTP server. If you have Windows 2000 Server, it comes with it. If you don't, look on the internet for "Free stmp server" or "free e-mail server."

11-where can get a guide and very detailed information regarding how to set up a website using ASP and SQL with shopping basket!, any website, reference, guide, forum, or anything that guide me step by step?

Books are the best source. Go to amazon and look up "ASP e-commerce" or whatever language you're using. Go to web sites like builder.com, webmonkey.com, where they have great tutorial. Lastly you can do a Google search for "creating a shopping cart"

12- what program i must use for ftp the hosting company!

I use WS_FTP, and recommend it.

13- which hosting company i must choose? that it is running what! and any recommended hosting company!! (with an efficient technical support! coz im clueless about hosting and all those stuffs).

I suggest you do a reviews check for hosting companies at http://www.webhostingratings.com. Personally, I use icdsoft.com, but they offer PHP, not ASP: http://www.icdsoft.com. It has great reviews and it's a damn good price. Tech support is great. I hear http://www.hostmysite.com is good too. They offer ASP. If you want to use SQL Server, it might like 12$ extra a month (or something like that). With open source solutions (PHP/MySQL Server) it's always cheaper.

14- can i test the website on my pc or not , if not then how to fix anything wrong when i upload my website to the hosting company, and how to identify the errors?

You can fix it from your machine but you'll need to have the same software they have. If they use ASP and SQL Server, then you'll need both on your machine. I doubt that they'll give you access to their SQL Servers from your machine.

Let us know what else you need. Good luck!

[floris]

Out of Cur.
You could check hotscripts.com for some serious asp/sql systems that have all these features and are easy to customize.

It is worth to check, if not only to get innotive ideas for your own setup or to see the system requirements and learn from that :)

[Tinaa]

Ok i got my decision on what i must have on my project i read what u said, but i came up with this, im dump, so plz correct me, i know im too late, but cant help, hope i will finish it in 40 days. i will do The E-commerce website will be a small website. arround 20 product on it. login, shooping cart, payment online "paypal" i think. the website will be RUNNING on MY PC (agree?)

is that the correct tools i need?
-Dreamweaver MX 2004 (For ASP.NET VB) ( I choose ASP.NET coz of my lecturor)
-WinXP Pro (no IIS installed on it yet)
-IIS 6 manager
-MsAccess? do u agree? and i will import them to sql as u said? what u think?SQL? i can get SQL server but i dont know how to set it and configure it)
-MS .NET SDK 1.1
-MDAC 2.7 (dunno how to use it as well- do i need ODBC as well?)
is that all?

any tutorial or specific book tells you in details and step by step how to work with Dreamweaver, and set up the pages , connection DB, shopping cart and all of that, i mean a complete easy steps for a whole website.

thx
Tina