what to write this in?

[robphelan]

i'm going to farm this out to a competent web developer but I need suggestions on what would be the best language to do this in.

Also, I will need to learn a little about the language so i can perform regular maintenance/tweaks when needed.

Overall picture:
I will need to allow multiple companies to log in and upload a flat file (comma delimited probably) to our web server.

Then, I would need to run each file through some complicated logic to determine risk factors. Currently, I have this logic in macros in Excel.

Then, I would fill in a template (.pdf or .doc) and email it back to the originating company within a few days(reason stated below).


Other Requirements
1) it will be a secure site - login necessary
2) track how many times a company uploads the file for billing purposes
3) I would like to offer 2 different options to subscribers - an On Demand (lite version of report) and full version in .pdf/.doc. Perhaps have a page where the company could upload their file and receive a condensed(lite) version immediately on screen and get their full version a few days later via email and/or snail mail.
4) perform some minor error checking/validation of the flat file to make sure it's in the correct format.

I think those are the major points.

thanks alot for your input.
rp.

 

[jjones]

It might help to state what programming language you are working in, so the recommendation could be more in line with what you're used to. That being said, I'm guessing that asp.net probably would work best for you, although what you need could be done in any of the server side languages.

If you already have hosting, do you know what languages and DBs the server supports?

 

[aCynic2]

You might be able to use AWK, maybe. When you say "compute risk factors" are you talking about probability and statistical analysis?

 

[robphelan]

Originally posted by: jjones
It might help to state what programming language you are working in, so the recommendation could be more in line with what you're used to. That being said, I'm guessing that asp.net probably would work best for you, although what you need could be done in any of the server side languages.

If you already have hosting, do you know what languages and DBs the server supports?

I work in ABAP (SAP's proprietary language) - not much help for this, i know.

as far as Risk Factors.. yes, there will be a certain amount of statistical analysis based on the input file.

I don't have any hosts in mind for this project. I do have a one already for our photo galleru but that's about it.

coworker suggested .NET - said I could d/l a lite version of visual studio and install IIS on my WinXP pro at home and start playing with that.

 

[Gunslinger08]

Originally posted by: robphelan

Originally posted by: jjones
It might help to state what programming language you are working in, so the recommendation could be more in line with what you're used to. That being said, I'm guessing that asp.net probably would work best for you, although what you need could be done in any of the server side languages.

If you already have hosting, do you know what languages and DBs the server supports?

I work in ABAP (SAP's proprietary language) - not much help for this, i know.

as far as Risk Factors.. yes, there will be a certain amount of statistical analysis based on the input file.

I don't have any hosts in mind for this project. I do have a one already for our photo galleru but that's about it.

coworker suggested .NET - said I could d/l a lite version of visual studio and install IIS on my WinXP pro at home and start playing with that.

.NET 2.0 is fairly easy to learn and should be able to handle everything you want to do. You don't need to install IIS on your computer at home if you have Visual Studio 2005. It has a web server built in that loads the site when you click "Play."

 

[imported_Dhaval00]

Download the Express versions of Visual Stuido Web Developer and SQL Server (including the Management Studio add-on). For your web-site you should be able to use Forms-based logon mechanism. Each web-page has a code-behind file (in either C# or VB.NET) - the front-end *.aspx file allows you to decalre your web-page controls in a declarative format. There is also a "Design" tab which allows you to see how your web-page will end up looking like. The "Design" tab does a sucky job of laying out controls if you are using *.css files to structure your layout; but you can debug the page in explorer to find out how it will look ultimately.

Each control in your *.aspx file can have server-side events that get hooked up in the code-behind file (for example, your presentation file is called test.aspx, then the corresponding code-behinf C# file will be called test.aspx.cs). It is in this file that you define your "event handlers." The notion here is that when a user clicks a button, something must happen on the server-side to handle that user-click. In your case it could "View Report." The ease factor here is that you can handle sessions easily via your code-behind files.

For the actual protocol, you can hook up the web-site to a SQL Server Express edition instance (it has a limit of 4 GB and minimal set of features, but you don't pay for it) to trck your company-related data. There are more goodies in .NET like a built-in Regex engine (for your flat-files), FTP API, Web Services, Generics, etc. that you can "easily" deploy and test. Mind you, if you haven't used .NET before, you have some grunt-work to do, but it is a very nice technology.