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ms2542
Jr. Member
Joined: 31 Dec 2025
Posts: 59
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 Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2025 5:02 am Post subject: best programming lanuage for databases |
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hi,
I've been handed the task at work to create a database that will not only be able to save everyone's work totals but also be able to do some calculations based on these work totals. Right now the entire database is in Excel and it s****. Basically I want to burn what we have now and create something online that everyone can access through their web browser. My problem is, I don't know what to language to use in order to do this. Should I go with MySQL? Java? Cobol? PHP? Is it possible to do the whole thing in HTML?
Right now, I know some COBOL but that's about it. I figured this is a great chance to learn another language so that's why I took on this project.
Any help is appreciated! I'm really at a loss where to begin. Ideally, I would like to do that whole thing in HTML but I don't think you can create a database in HTML and have users save their work...right?
Thanks again!
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mushroom
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Joined: 29 Jun 2025
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Location: Queen Charlotte B. C. Canada
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2025 5:59 am Post subject: |
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PHP is a scripting language that is run on a web server, the output is all in html. So you need to know html to write good php code.
PHP is a very powerful language and works very well with MySQL making the combination a natural choice for web apps, almost any thing can be done with combo.
But it is not some thing you can learn over night, or even in a few weeks.
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VHockey86
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Joined: 12 Dec 2025
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Location: Rochester
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| Posted: Wed Jan 13, 2025 7:44 am Post subject: |
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| mushroom wrote: |
But it is not some thing you can learn over night, or even in a few weeks. |
I'd say that depends entirely on the size of the project, the experience of the person with web technologies and programming in general, and their ability to learn new things...
Sure you can't be an expert in anything in a few weeks, but I've managed to write quite a few small scale PHP/mysql apps with very minimal effort to learn enough PHP for the task.
If it's a task that can be done in an excel workbook, albeit perhaps badly, then it should be pretty trivial to do with PHP/mysql (after all, a spreadsheet is basically just a single table).
I'd say that getting the user interface to look appealing and be easy to use is going to be more of a challenge than the backend for storing some data and doing a few calculations on it.
There are also some frameworks out there that can help eliminate alot of the boilerplate for these applications, however sometimes learning how to use the framework effectively is more work than just doing it from scratch for simple tasks (or really complicated ones that go outside the scope of the framework).
For PHP you've got Zend, Symfony and many others.
For Python you've got Django, Turbogears, Pylons, Zope
For Ruby there's Ruby on Rails
... you get the picture.
I don't think there's really one "best" thing out there, but the PHP+MySQL combination is probably the most popular and prominent.
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crouse
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ms2542
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Joined: 31 Dec 2025
Posts: 59
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| Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2025 1:07 am Post subject: |
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I just wanted to say thanks for everyone who replied to this posting. I'm definitely going to look into PHP since the table will have to be stored on a server somewhere. You did give me something to think about: the interface itself. I have people at work who are going to be using this that don't even know how to turn ON a computer at work so this is going to have to be very easy for them to do.
Still not 100% sure how I'm going to begin this though. I found some good resources on PHP and MySQL so I'll be doing some reading on them. I know for a fact that I'm going to code the whole thing from scratch since it's good experience.
Well, I better get crackin...thanks again for all your help!
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