Mike:

Why did you decide to go with Active Server Pages for the application? Why not Cold Fusion or Lotus Notes or CGI?

John:

Well, I could go off about how Active Server pages have changed my life and how I think they provide a more flexible tool for development... but the honest truth is, I wanted to put some classroom knowledge to work in a real world weblication.  Yes, I'm still in relative terms, an "ASP Newbie."

This Project Trak database has been in the back of my mind for quite a while.  The idea of sharing information across the web so that our staff would have access to project tracking information from home or at work was appealing. The ability to update pages on the fly was also key.  I didn't want to have to go into FrontPage, notepad, or Visual InterDev and write html code just to add information on a client.  Also keeping the data in one location was important.  We had been using an excel spread sheet shared across our network to do the job but since we were firewalled, you couldn't make changes from home.

In regards to Cold Fusion or Lotus Notes, I have a NT web server running IIS 4.0.   ASP is built in.  It's the natural choice.  I don't have to go out and buy anything additional.  ASP and IIS just go together... you know like wine and cheese.

Mike:

What was your biggest problem during development?

John:

The biggest problems were figuring out ways to best lay out the page to make the application functional rather than ornamental.  I wanted this to be something that we would actually use in day to day business... unlike say the Palm Pilot I have which I keep meaning to put my appointments and addresses in.  We did have one minor speedbump figuring out why after adding data to a form and submitting it, Project Trak logged the user out ... session timeout was the culprit.

Mike:

How many hours did you spend in planning? In development?

John:

Like I said, this project had been floating in the back of my mind for a while. I knew how I wanted this to work.  Then I took a class called integrating databases with the web.   We built a publication database.  I saw the light... and figured out how I could adapt that concept into something I could really use in every day life.  I also learned a valuable lesson of how easily pieces/snippets of code could be reused.

Development took about a day.  Coding was a few hours... design and "make it pretty" work took up the rest of the day and a little of the evening at home, too.

Mike:

Do you plan to migrate the application to Microsoft SQL Server in the future instead of Access?

John:

Well, if our development staff ever grows larger, we'll evaluate the benefits then.  For the task tracking the work of 3-5 developers, the current configuration works well for us.

Did you develop specifically for IE or did you also plan for Netscape?

John:

Ouch... well.... hmmm.  Let me think about that one.  I have to be honest, in day to day life I lean more towards IE than Netscape though as a web developer I know I have to make it functional for both browsers.  If I'm going to cut out something on one side though, it would be Netscape.  The caveat here is that I wouldn't cut out functionality.  I might cut out aesthetics though.  I'd never deliver a weblication that wouldn't work on both browsers unless it's used in a controlled environment.  That would just
be plain stupid.