Database help....need advice and ideas.

[SoopaStar]

I work or a small software company. I work in the main sales office (10 or so PC's) which is located near St. Louis. Our support and programming office is in Columbus, Ohio and we have another sales office in California.
We would like to get a basic database online somehow for all of us to share--mostly for support issues. I have come up with a couple of solutions for this....but I would liek to get your input on this regarding the feasability and stuff.
We all have cable modems or DSL, so internet speed is not much of an issue. We were going to host the database locally on a Windows 2000 Server with a PIII600 or better and 256 megs ram and a Seagate 10,000 rpm 4-6 gig scsi harddrive (all built by moi http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif )
So, leave the performance issues of the computer out of the equation please.
1) Use the Windows NT Terminal Services on the server and have each PC connect remotely with the terminal client. This way, they could each run our software that we already use here in the office. Each connection would take approx 12 megs ram for the remote users (up to 4 or 5) and the 8 to 10 locally networked machines would take probably less than 5.
2) Build an access database to be used online. I used Access 2000 and used their wizard/Template for the Contact Management database. That one is perfect for what we need it for (more or less). Here is my main question: Since we will be using an NT server configured with the IIS, is there a way I can export this database and forms (an *.mdb or *mde file) to html/asp and use directly from a webpage? I have never really used Access before (I am taking a database class in the fall semester at the university) and I do have a short background in Visual Basic, so I could probably learn the basics of access pretty fast. But, is there a way? I noticed you can export to html and skimmed the help file...and it seems that it may be possible. Just wondering if anyone has used ASP, access databases, or knew of a way I can do this.
3) Use a website company like desktop.com and make due with what they have in their applications. I found 7 or 8 of these type of sites, but none of them seem to have exactly what I need. Or, does anyone know of any software that we can run on our server that will do something like this?
4) I am open to any ideas, comments, etc...and thanks in advnance for your help.

Paul C.

[SoopaStar]

anyone know of a better place to ask this question...another message board forum perhaps that deals with this stuff?
Paul

[qball]

Other than Tech support, maybe a Database section should be provided...

Soopastar. I didn't read the whole message, so if my aswer fails, smack me.

Create an Access DB on the server to hold whatever data your business requires. Users can then access this data using there browsers through server side ASP. You can basically do whatever you want. Insert, update, delete data.

Access is a very easy DB. ASP is a very easy way to connect to DBs through web pages.

I could due it all in a couple of days, but that is what I do for a living.

WROX has a Beginners ASP book that has MSAccess examples. Check it out and this all should become a whole lot easier.

[SoopaStar]

What is WROX?

Paul

[Brian48]

I agree with qball. ASP is the preferred way to go if you want your users to directly interact with the dbase. However, if it's going to be strictly read-only info and updated by you only, then another option is to simply use the Access to generate a flat file, then ftp the file out to the webserver, and then use the data-binding capabilities of DHTML to read the flat file through the web browser. Only problem with this is that everyone must use IE. Not a problem if this is on an intranet and you have control over your users. I think it's a little easier than ASP (if you've never written in ASP before) since you don't need to worry about any other issues other than sending the flat file out to the server.