display of attached documents on web

I'm creating a database which will be used on a website. I have an image of
what I want but no idea how to make it happen. Can someone please let me
know what I need to learn for this?

The database will contain information about various documents- mostly
training and technical assistance materials for youth with intellectual
disabilities who want to go to college. The information will be searchable
by name, description, category, etc. Once a person finds a material they are
interested in, i would like them to be able to click its name to display a
page something like this:

Document Title
Creator:
Last Updated:

Description:
Categories:

[download word doc]
[download .pdf]
[download instruction sheet.doc]

Rate this item:
I will use/ have used this: (1-5 stars)
I like this (1-5 stars)

My questions:
-Where are word/ powerpoint/ .pdf/ .pub/ etc documents stored when you want
to link them to a webpage linked to your database?
-How do you do user feedback? (ie. "rate this item")
-How do i best set up my Access database to enable people more savvy than me
to do this? i believe they are planning on using MySQL.

AngelShadow wrote:
I'm creating a database which will be used on a website. I have an image of
what I want but no idea how to make it happen. Can someone please let me
know what I need to learn for this?

The database will contain information about various documents- mostly
training and technical assistance materials for youth with intellectual
disabilities who want to go to college. The information will be searchable
by name, description, category, etc. Once a person finds a material they are
interested in, i would like them to be able to click its name to display a
page something like this:

Document Title
Creator:
Last Updated:

Description:
Categories:

[download word doc]
[download .pdf]
[download instruction sheet.doc]

Rate this item:
I will use/ have used this: (1-5 stars)
I like this (1-5 stars)

My questions:
-Where are word/ powerpoint/ .pdf/ .pub/ etc documents stored when you want
to link them to a webpage linked to your database?
-How do you do user feedback? (ie. "rate this item")
-How do i best set up my Access database to enable people more savvy than me
to do this? i believe they are planning on using MySQL.


From the sound of the questions you know more about Access than web
development - hope I've gagued that right. I think I know just enough
about both to contribute usefully, but be alert for corrections from
experts.

Very briefly, to build an interactive website you need a server which
offers server-side scripting, so that you can include program code in
your pages which will be interpreted and run at the server end. This
code can contain directions to update or query a database, which will
also live on the server. Pages will end *.php or *.asp or *.aspx if
they have code which the server needs to interpret before sending to the
browsere.

One common systems for this are the MySQL database (broadly equivalent
to the Jet component of Access) with the PHP scripting language. This
is available free and is a common offering on web hosting services. The
major alternative is Microsoft's ASP.net, which (as far as I can see) is
considerably more powerful and considerably more complex. I know
ASP.net can work directly with Access as well as SQL server. I don't
know whether PHP can - but you may be able to link MySQL to Access via
"ODBC".

MySQL is a SQL engine, so you won't have the helpful wizards that Access
provides, and the "dialect" of SQL may well be slightly different -
watch out! Having said that, if you design your tables correctly in
Access it should be a fairly trivial process for someone who knows MySQl
to reproduce the table structure and import the data, even if there
isn't a way of using Access directly as the data repository. You may
even find that if you build the database in the program you already
know, and then learn MySQL for this project, you'll get the job done
more quickly, as the principles of good design are universal.

Your specifics:

Storing files: these would be in a folder on the server with links
stored in the database. I wouldn't offer PowerPoint and certainly
Publisher files to website users - many people don't have these programs
and a surprising number don't have Word (or the right version of Word).
I'd stick to PDF and provide a link to the Adobe Viewer (bloatware as
it has become!). You can download free converters (eg PDF995) to
"print" files to PDF (you'd do this beforehand and store the PDF on the
web server).

User feedback: You'd have a button on a web page which had an
associated Action which invoked a PHP or ASP procedure to use the form
contents to update or query the database. This is server-side coding
territory.

Set up your Access database: First find out for sure if the database
can be used as-is, or whether it has to be "connected" via ODBC, or
simply translated into MySQL. If noone is sure about this try asking
support at your hosting facility. Mine (liquidsix.com) is immensely
helpful, although not all are! Be aware that all that matters for this
database will be tables and queries, so (if you don't already) start
thinking in SQL by looking at the SQL view of the queries you create in
the query builder. Above all, get your table design "normalisation"
right. Keep your tables "pure" - don't use "Lookup fields" in data
tables. As long as you keep in mind that the web-page designers will
interact with the database only via SQL commands, you shouldn't go far
wrong.

Before clicking Send I've googled a little: the useful tutorial site
w3schools has a tutorial on PHP and that includes a page on how to
connect to an Access database directly from PHP:

http://www.w3schools.com/PHP/php_db_odbc.asp

HTH

Phil, London