Apps on an Intranet

[rockies1]

My boss has decided we need to move some of our Access 97 apps to the Intranet so lots of people can use them.

He stated that JAVA would be a way to go, but as I look at it, the learning curve is so great, I'll never learn it well enough to do what he wants before I die...(I've never used it before)

I know that Access 2000 can be used over an Intranet, but I'm not too familiar with that aspect of it.

I believe that VB apps can be used over the net as ActiveX...(correct me if I'm wrong)...

How difficult would it be to have a VB6 app run over the Intranet and act as a front-end to an Access 97 database?

I'm a VB guy, so I'd rather use it if possible...

I appreciate ANY suggestions, positive OR negative...

Thanks!!

[compuGEEK]

Java is not the best way to go if you're company is using Office products. You may as well take advantage of the Outlook object to achieve this.

If your company is using the Office Suite, (We're using Office 2000), you can then build applications using Outlook 2000 and incorporate Access or any other Office product into your app.

Check out this link:
http://www.outlookexchange.com/frameset.html

I've also just purchased a book called 'Building Applications with Outlook 2000 Technical Reference' from Microsoft Press.

My boss wants me to figure out a way to build electronic time sheets...We'll see!

[Brent Akester]

You have a few options here:

1) You can write an ActiveX control (OCX), which you can embed into a webpage (but which will only work with IE, as Netscape doesn't support ActiveX, being the piece o' crap that it is <cough>). That OCX can then provide a 'front end' for your database, from a web page.

2) You can use ASP.

3) You can create a web page with a hyperlink directly to the Access DB/forms. Provided every user who will be accessing the DB has Access on their own computers, you can actually get Access to run inside of IE. But this is far from an optimal solution

If you plan on building an ActiveX component, you should know a bit about COM and OOP with VB. One of the cool things about an ActiveX control, DLL or EXE is that you can reuse them in other projects. But if you have no experience with COM, ASP is probably your best bet.

[lychew]

If you would like to have a quick solution, i think Access 2000 will be the best. It's not that hard actually to learn especially you are a VB programmer. The interface is much nicer.

If you want to start with ASP, then you'll have to learn vbscript/jscript, html and a little bit of talent in graphic design as well. You can actually save the forms to ASP. From there, you can customise the ASP pages.


Or finally you can use OCX... remember that these are all microsoft technology. Using OCX means writing the whole object again including the interface. This will be the most time consuming.

If you want to use other then microsoft... then Java of course.