need some direction

[Robgould]

First let me appologize for asking a question that I am sure you have heard before. I have been playing with excel and access for a couple of years, where I started using VBA. I do this mostly at work. I have gotten to where I feel like I do a pretty fair job, and have actually wrintten a couple databases that are used company wide at my work. I am not an IT professional, this is stuff that I do outside of my normal responsibilities. In doing this, I have learned something about myself. I love it. I think I have some geek in me. I have also realized that there is a market for database/web applications. I would like to try my hand at designing interactive web based database applications. Not looking to get rich, but I would love to build an application for a company and actually see it being used. I think that would be very satisfying. I have to admit to being a bit overwhelmend though. I don't want to use access, because I don't want to depend on Access. I would like to use all free tools so that I would not have any software cost assosciated with the application. I owuld like it to be platform independent. Here is the problem, I have no idea where to start.

I was thinking about html, php and mysql. Is that a good idea? Is there an IDE somewhere that will bind all that together for me in one place?

Php - Do I need to install software to make this code work? I mean do I have to install apache and set up the sebserver? Would javascript be a better choice?

mysql - ?????

Is there a book you would recomend for me, or a tutorial site?

What about python? I really don't know what it is capable of, but I hear about it alot.

Thanks for your time.

[johnnymac]

It sounds like you want to do some web-based application development. If so, PHP is as good a place to start as any. If you are doing development based in PHP you don't have to worry about platform issues. Setting up PHP, MySQL, Apache can be accomplished on any platform (Linux or Windows) and it is a very capable environment. One recent project I completed was developing a Web-based resort management system using the above configuration.

I hope I gave some direction...but remember, don't limit yourself...learn as much as possible. Being multi-lingual in the developmet world separates you from those who have jobs...and those who don't.

[LorenzoD]

To get started with PHP, you should just have to install apache (1 or 2) and PHP. Under Ubuntu, you shouldn't have to do anything else. You will need to copy your PHP scripts to /var/www to test them.

With mysql you will need to do a little bit more, since you will need to create a database. But it's not really very difficult and there are several GUIs available for both Gnome and KDE.

For editing you may want to try bluefish or screem if you are using Gnome, or Quanta+ if you are using KDE. They are all powerful environments in there own ways. If you want something that resembles Dreamweaver, try NVU.

There are other alternatives as well. I'm just giving you a few examples that you may want to start by investigating.