Interacting With the Web

[thedonedeal]

I'm working on a Visual Basic application and would like to have it send its results (either an XML file or database rows) from the application to a database online for processing.

I'm more familiar with MySQL/PHP but have no idea where to get started on with this.

What I would like to have happen is:

1 - The user runs the program. (the program itself is storing its results on a database installed on the computer)

2 - The user is ready to submit the results of this program for processing. (a bunch of swiss styled match results including who participated, who won, and other information for the tournament) They submit the results through a command available in the program. (I guess this would be considered an upload.)

3- Once received in the database, the database would store the results in its own table. (I just need to get it flagged for processing.)

4- The program sends an acknowledgement back to the program.

I also need help doing the inverse. (That is the database online sends it back to the database on the computer)

I know its a pretty complicated answer but any steps which will take me to an answer is appreciated.

[thines01]

If you own both ends of this (both client and server), you have a couple of options:
What it sound like is that you need database replication.
Otherwise, you could write a WCF service on the far end to accept the data and store it in the database while the local machine writes it to its own machine.

Or you could use sockets to send messages back and forth.

It really depends on what you're going to do with the data at the far end.
Also, depending on security and its actual location, you could just write to the database at the far end directly rather than sending messages.

All of this depends on how it's going to be used.

[thedonedeal]

If you own both ends of this (both client and server), you have a couple of options: What it sound like is that you need database replication. Otherwise, you could write a WCF service on the far end to accept the data and store it in the database while the local machine writes it to its own machine.

Or you could use sockets to send messages back and forth.

It really depends on what you're going to do with the data at the far end. Also, depending on security and its actual location, you could just write to the database at the far end directly rather than sending messages.

All of this depends on how it's going to be used.

The WCF service sounds like what I had in mind.

I was thinking of writing a database on the client machine to store the information then providing a menu option or button so that the client can submit the data for processing on the WWW server.

Where would I get started at with WCF coding?

[thines01]

You can start here: MSDN: Getting Started with WCF

You can also check out this: dnrTV Video: Keith Elder Demystifies WCF

I also use this book: Essential Windows Communication Foundation