Acc2K DAP versus Visual Interdev

[RichMorrison]

About 18 months ago I made a few simple Web apps using Visual Interdev and VBscript and .asp pages and local Access 97 data bases with ADO. It all seemed to work.

Now I am starting to read up on Access 2000 "Data Access Pages".

What is your opinion on the relative merits of these tools ?

Would you invest your time in learning to make DAPs or instead get back up to speed on Visual Interdev or other web development tools ?

old but willing to learn,
RichM

 

[Pat Hartman]

I would not use A2K at all for web development. A2002 has much better features according to the literature.

 

[BukHix]

Rich I agree with Pat on this one except that I would also add that if you are going to do this semi-proffesionaly I would stay away from DAP all together, even in 2002.

At this point in the game you are better off downloading Webmatrix for free from MS and start learning ASP.Net.

 

[RichMorrison]

Thanks for the replies.

I am constrained by the available tools at the client site, free or not.

At this time the only Microsoft tool available here seems to be "Front Page".

Any opinions on that ?

Thanks,
RichM

 

[BukHix]

FrontPage used to be my favorite web development tool. That is until I went semi professional with development and needed to work with server side scripting (ASP). Although it can be done in FP it ranks slightly above notepad for usability and usefulness. However if that is what you are stuck with that is what you will have to use.

If your client has IIS 4 or above installed you should be able to do classic ASP. If they are the adventurous type and have installed the .Net framework you can start using ASP.Net.

Neither requires Interdev or Webmatrix but both tools make a dev’s life much easier.

Having said all that I know of a business man who has setup a pretty successful site using only the FrontPage Database Wizards and Access 2000. Although he can do most things with just those two without any dev experience he has no way of configuring many special needs code. That is when he calls me