Online Database Programming & Linux

[card_magic]

Okay, I've never done any programming like this, so forgive me if I sound like an idiot.

Here is what I want to do... for a senior project, at my university, I need to make something snazzy. Also, my Mother's side of the family is huge... she has 12 brothers and sisters, and almost all of them have several kids.. so the family wants a webpage. So my idea is to create a relational database, with every person in the family as a record. I then want to create a webpage that accesses this database in a variety of different ways... like, you can search for a specific member... create leveled family trees... write java applets that retrieve info from the database for various reasons, query a list of cousins, or parents or something, etc. And I want to do it all on an Apache server, or something, that I would set up on a linux box. Thus, I'll learn, and display, knowledge of linux, databases, and web programming. Unfortunatly, I know nothing about setting up a database in linux, or how to write webpages and java applets that query this database. Can anyone give me some helpful links, or advice, to aid me in my project? I want this to be a VERY impressive project, but I don't want to get in over my head.

Thanks in advance,
-Jim

[Rhino302]

If you actually get that worked out, that would be killer for a class project. My Database management class, I didn't do anything NEAR as high tech as that. If you can't get it straightened out, remember you can always use good ole Access 2000 and their built in web pages to run your forms.

[card_magic]

Well, I would simply have a field where you can specify the parents of any member, and the children of any member. Then, I can just create a tree data structure, and from there I can write find_cousin or find_aunt or whatever, routines. Thats the plan anyway. My question is more of, what database system to use, and how would I set it up in Linux? Which databases are free?

-Jim

[vass0922]

Hmmm
Do you want relations as related to ONE person or be able to figure out relations related to anybody in the family tree?

For instance do you want the DB to relate all family members in respect to you? ie YOUR cousins are your mothers/fathers sons/daughters?

If you're trying to do any relations in respect to anybody.. good luck!! lol
That would probably require a fair amount of time and a pretty complicated algorithm.

however if you're choosing option 1, you could have a column in the family table that states their relations (RelationType) 1 = Father, 2 = Mother, 3 = Cousin, 4 = Nephew etc.

[dragonB]

I made something similar and smaller.
I used asp and access.

I created the family tree list thing all dynamically using recursion in ASP. Of which I was fairly proud, even though the code is fairly ugly at the moment.
Also, it is dependent on 1 person, my grandma being at the top, but this wouldn't be too hard to change.
In the database, I only made fields for mother and father, and figure out everything from there, with some creative recursion and sql.

Here's my table for the db.
Id, lastname, firstname, email, birthday, month, year, addressid(address in another table),fatherid, motherid, spouseid
If anyone has any ideas on how to figure out relationships, that would be helpful. For example, if I selected 2 people, figure out the relationship.

Also, a free db that works well on linux would be MYSQL. It's fairly good, free, and the learning curve isn't too big.

cya
dragonB

p.s. after putting the link in, I decided not to, since it contains the addresses and emails of my whole extended family. If you want to take a look at it, email me and I'll send you the link.