Database Entry Using A Web Page-->Plz Help!!

[Travis Box]

I'm looking for a simple 'Drag-n-Drop' style software package that
will allow me to create web pages, through which people can enter
information that will be saved either in an excel-styled database, or
in a format that can easily be converted to an excel-style format. I
can already use MS Access to do this, but with Access, each of the
users who access the site to enter the information all have to have an
MS Office License. I'd like to be able have the end user enter the
information on a web page and have that web page save the information
in a database format without having to have the MS Office License.
Any Suggestions?? Please Help!!!!

 

[Greg Schmidt]

I'm looking for a simple 'Drag-n-Drop' style software package that
will allow me to create web pages, through which people can enter
information that will be saved either in an excel-styled database, or
in a format that can easily be converted to an excel-style format. I
can already use MS Access to do this, but with Access, each of the
users who access the site to enter the information all have to have an
MS Office License. I'd like to be able have the end user enter the
information on a web page and have that web page save the information
in a database format without having to have the MS Office License.
Any Suggestions?? Please Help!!!!

I don't completely understand your problem. I'll rephrase the parts I
think I understand, and then answer those. You can let us know how
close I've come to covering the bases.

Q: I want to have a web page where users can enter information which is
saved into a database.

A: This would be handled by an HTML form. When the form is submitted
through CGI, the handler script would parse the data, verify that it is
all valid (never trust anything from a user!), and write it into the
database. The best solution for this might be to use the Perl modules
CGI (which can generate the form and handle parsing of submission) and
DBI (which is a general interface to a large number of databases,
including MS Access). CGI topics are better discussed in the newsgroup
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.cgi and Perl topics are better discussed
in comp.lang.perl.misc. Make sure you know which group is correct for
any particular question you have, or you will be redirected, and not
always in a friendly manner.

Q: If I use MS Access for this, do all my users need to have MS Access?

A: I don't think so. The end user is interacting with a web server
through an HTML page. The server is interacting with MS Access.
Whether MS's licensing agreement allows this is a separate question.
You might also consider using something like MySQL, which is more
robust, has better performance, is freely available for both Windows and
UNIX platforms, and is also supported by the Perl DBI module.

Your question about drag and drop is beyond me. Are you looking for
something that will create the data entry web pages automatically based
on the database table configuration? There might be a CPAN module for
that, I've never looked (although I will now, just out of curiousity).
Or did you mean being able to drag and drop "data" into the form? Or
something else entirely?

 

[Alan D-W]

I'm looking for a simple 'Drag-n-Drop' style software package that
will allow me to create web pages, through which people can enter
information that will be saved either in an excel-styled database, or
in a format that can easily be converted to an excel-style format. I
can already use MS Access to do this, but with Access, each of the
users who access the site to enter the information all have to have an
MS Office License. I'd like to be able have the end user enter the
information on a web page and have that web page save the information
in a database format without having to have the MS Office License.
Any Suggestions?? Please Help!!!!

No, none of the users need an Office licence at all. Access runs on the
server and it is assumed that it is a legal and licenced copy; the only
actual 'user' of Access is the server itself - users are not deemed to be
using the software personally.
Alan