OK.. I want to start trying to develop a web app using an SQL Server 2000 database. The only language I know comfortably (but not totally) is VB (although VB.NET is giving me lots of problems). What should I use to develop this program? Dreamweaver? Visual Studio.NET has web development built in, is that a good choice? Anyones, and everyones comments are appreciated :-).

Dreamweaver MX would help, but anything below that ver u'll need UltraDev - but i think u know that. what abt using ASP or JSP for doing the ODBC hooks? ???

For the design of the site, I think it's a lot easier if you use Dreamweaver. You can easily test out different ideas on the design and worry little about the coding. If you need a quick manual tweek, you can open up the code viewer.

For coding, however, I don't recommend Dreamweaver. The interface is still designed for graphical development rather than coding. I'd recommend something like Homesite, which was made strongly for coding.

If you want to develop using ASP, definitely go with Visual InterDev. It rocks. Color coding, code completion; the layout is very similar to Visual Basic's IDE, premade templates, full list of objects, filelist, nice visual interface to your ODBC db, etc. So I recommend you do the design in Dreamweaver, then when you're ready to CGI it, use Visual InterDev.

Dreamweaver UltraDev is good tool; providing DB development in a graphical way, but it could be quirky depending if you're used to coding the old fashion way. Also, it adds extra overhead. If you make a simple application through Dreamweaver UltraDev, and do the same one by hand, you'll realize that UltraDev adds more lines of code. It uses a standard "this-way-fits-all" kind of of coding, so when you're doing developing, you'll realize you'll have more code through UltraDev. Not recommended unless you dislike coding and you're in a hurry. (Usually for those non-web developers who are assigned a small app for the company.)

I haven't had a chance to give VS.net a spin, but I would imagine it kept the same layout as Visual InterDev when you do any web development.

fyi - Dreamweaver MX incorporated UltraDev & Homesite & as such theyre no longer stand alone prods - i'm very much looking forward to dive head 1st into MX -----------> as soon as i can get it running on my Mac!!!

I have to play around with it more. I'm using a very old beta version of DWMX (almost an Alpha version). I have to see how they merged together in the final release.

I rarely use DW for database apps. I'd much prefer writing them out from scratch myself. I'm not surprised how Adobe sued Macromedia for copying their GUI. (The GUI on the MX line of products look very similar to Adobe's (especially DWMX and GoLive).

i might need to be corrected on Homesite not being a stand alone prod anymore - was redownloading the MX family of products (sans Coldfusion) and saw that Homesites still downloadable - didnt investigate it tho to see what ver & all; gonna boost my iBook from std 64MB to 320MB and c if that lets me load&access MX... :-\

I didn't think anything happened to Homesite. In the last Macromedia developer conference Kevin Lynch said it will be around as a stand alone for hand coding. I've heard that the DWMX CD comes with a special version of Homesite, but haven't had a chance to purchase it yet.

I suggest you start out with ASP using NotePad. This requires a lot of preparation since you will be on your own, no intellisense, tooltips, etc. The next best is to use Visual Interdev 6.0 with a local IIS on your machine(Windows XP Pro or Windows 2000, desist using Windows ME or windows 95). I am suggesting Visual Interdev 6.0, because you cannot really stop at Visual Interdev, you will have to( you will be forced to in the future), go to Visuao Studio 7.0 with the .NET Framework. With Visual Interdev as the basis, you will find this lot easier. :lol:

mysorian

Visual Studio.Net has a control in the SqlClient library that will allow you to make a connection to the database and pull the information from the source without writing a single line of code. You also can write Vanilla asp in the Visual Studio .net environment.