Welcome to the help page. The purpose of this page is to explain
to the ordinary person what some of the things that we are saying on this site
means. This page is not written for advanced programmers.
ASP, ISAPI, PHP, JSP, JAVA, C#.NET, VB 6, DELPHI 6
Generally this is not important for the client to know or to
understand, so if you do not understand it, do not be too concerned. It becomes
an important issue to us, if we are to extend an existing web site on a server.
Every web server only accepts certain languages and systems and we then have to
find out which ones they are and write the application in a particular
language. Some web servers are so inferior (for example Ledanet in Cairns) they
do not give us any authority at all except building static web sites only. We
do not select such a server at all and we warn not only our clients but also
anyone who requests information. We are very sensitive about our back up
support and the permission to use executable files.
Because our Internet sites are dynamic, it means that the server
has to build the page before it can send it to the requesting web browser. In
order to do that, we have to write the application in particular languages such
as PHP, JAVA and so on.
For the client it does not matter in which language the
application is written in, except for the C#.NET. C#.NET has most power and
looks variation, for the lowest price (if the developer passes the cost savings
over to the client as we do).
As a general Interest, the computer does not actually understand
these programming languages. They are written for humans to understand. Once
the application gets compiled, it gets changed into what we call an executable.
The executable only consists of ones and zeros and only the computer can
understand and execute them. Executables have an "exe" or "dll" extension.
IMPORTANT!
If a developer develops an application for you, may it be a
desktop application or Internet application, they almost never supply you with
the original document written in the original language (source codes). Without
these source codes, which are written in a particular language, nobody can
modify, change or expand your application and you are stuck with that
developer, even if you do not wish him to carry out any more work. The
difference between us and them is that we provide the source codes to our
client and in this way our client can always go to someone else with the same
application for bug fixes, modification and extensions, if he desires to do so,
provided of course that the new developer possesses the required skill. Many
web site developers (most in Cairns) do not have the skill and I have noticed
that they rather give a prospective client the untruthful advice, that the
application is flawed. If you think this is happening to you, you can contact
us even if you are not our client.
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SQL - Structured Query Language
This is a very important language which almost all web developers
in Cairns lack of. It is a universal language which databases understand. This
language enables us to add new data into a database table, edit or delete data
in a database and more.
This language is often written within a desktop - or web
application and it can talk to an external database through a database driver.
In this way a database can provide data for a web application to build a page,
add, edit or delete existing data and more.
For example let's say we would say:
SELECT Productname FROM Products WHERE ProductPrice < 130000
It means get me all the Names of the Products, which are in the
Products table of the database, which cost less than 130000 Dollars. So the
consumer can see all the house prices in Manunda which cost less than 130000
Dollars. As you can see, one of the inadequacies with static web sites (they do
not use a database) is, that you can not query anything. You would for example
see all the hotels, not only the ones that are in the City and are less than
120 Dollars per night with breakfast. It is this what makes static sites so
inferior! And there is no need for it, as with the new ASP.NET, dynamic sites
can be built at the cost of static sites. Also remember that an ACCESS database
on the ASP.NET web server is FREE and has awsome power. It is adequate for
almost all small to medium size businesses and if an SQL2000 database is
required, the extra cost is minimal!
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