Help with dev tool and language selection (or coding) - New to programming

[vasilijepetkovic]

I have a problem that I have to solve programmatically and since HTML
is pretty much the only code I have been exposed to I need an advice on
how to develop the programmatic solution to the problem I have.

In the nutshell, it'd be great if you can give me guidance in terms
of:

1) What programming language to use
2) What development tools to use
3) Tips on how to code the solution

So, here is my challenge:

I have a flat text file, 30000 records, each record has two columns,
the columns are tab separated.

The file looks like this (approximately)

Sarajevo 431104-133111
Mostar 441242-133421
Zagreb 432322-134423


The first value is a name of a town, and the second value represent
longitude-latitude in degrees, minutes and seconds.

For each record I have to create an html file that will be named as the
name of the town (i.e. Sarajevo.html). The content of the file will be
rather simple; in the first row it will contain the header (i.e.
"This page displays longitude-latitude information") - The second
row will have the following word: "Grad" - and the third row will
contain the name of the city and the fourth row will have the
longitude-latitude info.

The program also needs to prompt me (before it starts spitting the html
pages) and ask what test should be entered in line one (I would than
manually enter "This page displays longitude-latitude information")
and it also need to prompt me about the text that should be entered in
line two (I'd go and manually enter "grad").

I'd greatly appreciate any coment and/or guidance.


Best,

Vasilije Petkovic Vasa

(Help with dev tool and language selection (or coding) - New to
programming)

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

First, you must know and tell us what is supported by your web host.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[vasilijepetkovic]

The pages will be pure static html pages. Therefore, I'd have to create
30,000 files. It's my understanding that almost every host should be
able to serve a simple and static html code.
Best,
Vasa

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

If you want to do static pages, then you really don't need any help with a development tool or
language

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[vasilijepetkovic]

Yes, I am struggling with the fact that I cannot manually creat 30K
pages.

I will need a tool that will loop thru the dataset and spit out the
pages I need. Yet, I dont know how and with what tool to do this.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Why don't you want to use a database server-side scripting solution where you would only need to
have a single template page? If hosted on Windows IIS, then you could use the FP database component
with Access to do this.

Otherwise you will need to learn a scripting language to parse the text file and generate 30,000
pages.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[vasilijepetkovic]

Google will not index 30K database driven pages - it will index 30K
separate html pages.

 

[Thomas A. Rowe]

Yes, they will. It just depends on how you create/generate your pages. Mainly each page indexed,
must have unique content and single querystring parameter.

--
==============================================
Thomas A. Rowe (Microsoft MVP - FrontPage)
==============================================
If you feel your current issue is a results of installing
a Service Pack or security update, please contact
Microsoft Product Support Services:
http://support.microsoft.com
If the problem can be shown to have been caused by a
security update, then there is usually no charge for the call.
==============================================

 

[Jon Spivey]

Google, MSN and Yahoo seem happy with more than one param now. Having said
that it's much better to rewrite the urls to elimate query strings, so
instead of www.you.com/cars.aspx?make=bmw&model=m3 you'd have
www.you.com/cars/bmw/m3.aspx this will get Google crawling a lot more pages
in less time. There's a slight edge to be had from having .htm pages parsed
as .aspx eg www.you.com/cars/bmw/m3.htm although with a big site Google may
well crawl so fast that it causes a crash - needs good code and keeping a
careful eye on the site.

 

[p c]

As others have said, the best solution for you, for finishing the
project quickly and efficiently, and having a efficient maintainance
system for your project is a database and dynamically generated pages.
It makes sense, because the best way to manage "database records is a
real database. Your flat file is a low end database

My sugestions are:
1. Find out what database and script language the server you want to
host the "solution" supports.
E.g., Access or SQL Server with ASP; MYSQL with PHP

2. Import your the data in your flat file into the DB you want to use.
In the future use the DB to mainin the records-don't go back to the falt
file.

3. Create dynamic pages in the script language that your server supports
and quuriy your db.

As an alternatrive, if you don't want to serve the reocrds as pages
through a web server, you can create a report template within the the
database and export/save as HTML.

...PC