Looking for the language for the job

[homeostasis81]

There were a couple of administrative headaches that I think could be made easier by putting forms on our company's intranet. However while I have programming experience I have little web programming experience. I wanted to know what language or technology would be appropriate for the following tasks.

Task 1
Have an error checking web page to input in new employees. The page then adds its information to an excel form (using cdo, possibly) which later can be used to add the user via adsi.

Task 2
Have a web page that has three pull down menus. Each successive pull down menu will be narrowed down by the previous one. This would make it so the result will not error. Then finally a result would be found based on whatever was in the pull down.

I wasnt sure what would be best for the situations. If anyone has any suggestions on what language and any recommendations on a book for such it would really be appreciated

Thanks in advance

[LagMonster]

Right off the top of my head I can't think of what would work *best* for the excel thing, I am thinking xml or something like that. Maybe use active X if everyone is using IE.

BUT the menu thing could probably be done using DHTML.

<a href="http://www.dynamicdrive.com" target="_blank">www.dynamicdrive.com</a> has lots of DHTML examples.

Including many menu effects...I am sure you can edit existing examples to hide the other menus.

Hope it helped.

[homeostasis81]

I think Collaborative Data Objects can create and modify an excel file. Im not sure though. I think its an extension of vb, someone correct me if Im wrong

[Kaipora]

i've seen something similar, but using a dbase behind excel. the web page can easily write to a dbase and a little vb program can pull the necessary info into the sheet without having to worry about CDO. i don't even know what that is.

[homeostasis81]

Sorry I screwed up with the CDO its just an exchange and outlook thing. An example of a CDO program would be Outlook Web Access. I thought it was a way to access excel and word documents.

What language was the used to do that page you mentioned, Kaipora???

Thanks everyone

[lysergic]

For task 1:
If your company has a MSSQL lic and an IIS server then use it. Just make an asp app that place all the data in the database then use ASP to create your reports directly to excel. You could use ASP to directly interact with excel as the database, but remember excel is not a database. Works much like a flat file, but even buggier. You could also use an access database but then you loose the functionality of such options such as stored proceedures and the robustness of a relational database.

Finally you could use a php/mySQL solution but most businesses are much more comfortable with Microsoft. If you can manage to change that then go for it, but generally that is just the way it is.

As far as error checking you could use either javascript if you can control the browser that will run the app which is generally no prob on an intranet. If this is an internet app then you could also use server side validation controls.

Task 2:
This could be done with a javascript array. Best way would to populate the arrays from a database with what ever you needed. If you did not want to use javascript then you are looking at having each dropdown generated by the server for each request, but your overhead for this is going to be very large as each page request will require a few trips to the server.

[FooL]

Task 1: I'm not too familiar with DB apps...but it sounds like an ASP page will be good for you...especially since it's web based in the first place.

Task 2: I would definately go with JavaScript on this one. It's easy and fits with HTML in a no-brainer kind of way.

I wouldn't take my word for gold...but more input is always a good thing.

[homeostasis81]

Thats what Im thinking of doing. ASP and Javascript.

Thanks everyone