Datagrid for ASP?

[Richard Speiss]

I have a website that uses a database and ASP to create the pages from this
database.

Currently I have an application written that connects to the remote database
and allows me to add/change/delete records from the various tables.

I want to get rid of my stand alone application and integrate this ability
into the website itself. i.e. Have the browser login and then be able to
operate on the tables using some sort of DataGrid like component. There
seems to be a lot out there for .NET but I was wondering if there was
something available for "classic" ASP?

I would appreciate any thoughts or directions

Richard Speiss

 

[Bob Barrows [MVP]]

I have a website that uses a database and ASP to create the pages
from this database.

Currently I have an application written that connects to the remote
database and allows me to add/change/delete records from the various
tables.

I want to get rid of my stand alone application and integrate this
ability into the website itself. i.e. Have the browser login and
then be able to operate on the tables using some sort of DataGrid
like component. There seems to be a lot out there for .NET but I was
wondering if there was something available for "classic" ASP?

This question is somewhat offtopic. ASP, remember, is about using
server-side script to
a) process request data
b) generate HTML to be sent to the client

However, there are components created to be used by server-side script - you
can probably get information about them in the components group.

Visual Interdev had some Design-Time controls (DTC's) that were frankly a
waste of time.

Bob Barrows

 

[Richard Speiss]

My apologies. I assumed that this component would be written in ASP and
generate the appropriate HTML for the browser to interact with

Richard

 

[Bob Barrows [MVP]]

No apologies needed. I was not intending a rebuke.

 

[paul]

I've done some datagrids (or something similar) myself but they can be
a little hard to explain in a post. But here are some links I found
that might hopefully be useful.

ASP Datagrid V 1.0 beat by Omeya Ambre
http://www.planet-source-code.com/vb/scripts/ShowCode.asp?txtCodeId=8802&lngWId=4
"It has got vb datagrid functionality to add, edit, delete record ...
give me some time i ll also do sorting & paging "
Free.

Creating a Datagrid Class in classic ASP - Introduction by Brian
O'Connell
http://www.developerfusion.com/show/2328/
Free.
Uses a class.

ASP Datagrid object by Claus Stahnke
http://www.dmxzone.com/ShowDetail.asp?NewsId=4739
$69 (as of 7/2004). Free demo

DbNetGrid
http://www.dbnetgrid.com/dbnetgrid/default.aspx
$199 - $1,499 depending on how it is used. Free demo.

Best regards,
J. Paul Schmidt, Freelance Web and Database Developer
http://www.Bullschmidt.com
Access Database Sample, Web Database Sample, ASP Design Tips

 

[Bob Barrows [MVP]]

I have a website that uses a database and ASP to create the pages
from this database.

Currently I have an application written that connects to the remote
database and allows me to add/change/delete records from the various
tables.

I want to get rid of my stand alone application and integrate this
ability into the website itself. i.e. Have the browser login and
then be able to operate on the tables using some sort of DataGrid
like component. There seems to be a lot out there for .NET but I was
wondering if there was something available for "classic" ASP?

I would appreciate any thoughts or directions

Richard Speiss

I just came across this:
http://www.axezz.com/AxpDb/Index.aspx

 

[Richard Speiss]

Thanks for all the links. I will check those out.

Richard

 

[Richard Speiss]

Thanks, Ill check that out too.

Just out of curiousity, my web server is using ASP because that's what I
loaded on it originally. Is it much effort to upgrade a site to ASP.NET?

Does the client have to have .NET installed as well or is it strictly a
server side thing (i.e. it does not generate code that requires .NET on the
client)?

There's not a huge reason (other than time to learn ASP.NET) that is
preventing me from upgrading to ASP.NET and using the .NET datagrid. Would
my existing pages have to change or is it backwards compatible?

Thanks again

Richard

 

[Kyle Peterson]

good reading if you are thinking about switching over to .net

http://www.powerasp.com/content/new/asp-and-aspdotnet.asp

just one opinion but some good points

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Not if you're used to web application boundaries, authentication
schemes, security tokens, permissions, user rights etc. There are two
separate answers to your question.

1. Upgrading the web server; if you've used IIS for years on big servers
and read all the readme files, you'll probably find this part easy.

2. Upgrading the "site"; that's completely different! In my view you
can't upgrade it, you have to rewrite it in .NET

Bear in mind that ASP.NET technology is not really much different to ASP
on the surface, but there's more to it than that; once you switch to
ASP.NET you have to start writing all your code in .NET and that's
completely different to something like VBScript and COM. It's also
arguable that you'd need something like Visual Studio.

Only if you listen to Microsoft. Their current hype is that web
applications, HTML and the W3C are dead, and in future all distributed
apps will run on Windows/IE only, as Avalon-enabled XAML "smart clients"
with an SOA back-end. The reality is that the future is open-standards
W3C cross-browser code with cross-platform open-source back-ends. Hell
you only have to look back a few years to the security disaster brought
on by ActiveX to see why you don't want the Microsoft "dream". Future
apps will need to run "out of the box" on any browser and o/s, and
without any silly security warnings or dumbo dialogs saying things like
"Would you like to install and run get-rich-quick v2"

You can run .NET server side and server web apps without any of the
aforementioned hype, but look out for how ASP.NET renders it's HTML - it
changes it for different browsers and that's a sin, because it means the
Microsoft authored code it's generating is not cross-browser. Don't
worry you can turn this off in web.config

 

[Gerry Hickman]

Hi Kyle,

good reading if you are thinking about switching over to .net

http://www.powerasp.com/content/new/asp-and-aspdotnet.asp

just one opinion but some good points

Interesting, but I'd like to have seen more comparisons of the actual
technologies used, and also harder hitting questions on how it fits with
future strategies.

One thing that is of special interest to me, is where you say that ASP
is better for the novice developer and .NET is more advanced. This is
the opposite to a) how it's being sold by Microsoft, b) how our own
developers view it.

With .NET (and assuming you have Visual Studio) you can just drag and
drop a few controls onto a form, hit build, and then the app will run
with very little coding, and even when you need to code, you'll get all
that cosy intellisense to help you. Much easier than manually typing ASP
code in notepad! Once it comes to so-called "business objects", how many
classic ASP guys are able to write a COM middle-tier with the correct
threading model etc? .NET does it all for you...

However, I'm there doing all the IIS stuff and knowing what to do when
it gives a cryptic error, and maybe that's where some developers can't
cut it. I also tend to use ASP for my own projects because I find .NET
is like a big glossy facade, but some of these new .NET developers have
lost sight of how the web actually works and they never really
understood Windows so-called "security" in the first place.

One downside of ASP though (relevant to the subject) is that you can end
up re-inventing the wheel all the time (e.g. making a data grid) whereas
..NET has a lot of pre-built kiddie-bricks you can play with out of the box.