Web applications development

If I have the following scenario, what should I do?

The boss of a small company wants to competerize the daily operations.

Say, he has the office in City A, but owns a factory and warehouse in
City B. He wants to interconnect these locations by computer. He want
to build a database to manage the stock, and query the warehouse
status using browser when he goes online. What key issues that he
should think of?

1. Database
2. Application server
3. Web server
4. Internet service
5. A main programming language
6. Web page

Anything else?

He wants the whole system developed by 1. Java in Windows platform or
2. Windows platform (without using Java), then, what are the most i)
suitable (easy, convenient) ii) cheapest iii) common choice of above
items?

Actually, I know something like Oracle, MySQL, ... for database, but
do not know which is the most appropriate selection.

Thanks for your answers!

Nick
Tue Jul 27 08:40:19 CDT 2004

Well, you did ask on a Microsoft NG...

Put a web server in the warehouse, connected to a DSL line. On the Web
server, (Windows Server 2003), use Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS -- comes
with Windows Server) to provide the web site experience (assuming he needs a
web site, which it sounds like he does). Provide either a little web
application on the side or inside Sharepoint as a web part. The web
application would be written in VB.NET or C#.

Have it connect to a database written either in SQL Server or MSDE (MSDE is
the free version of MS SQL Server... you can download from microsoft.
Better than MySQL, IMHO).

If he will have fewer than 30 or so employees connected to his web
application at a time, he may be able to get away with just one machine with
all software on it. If not, or he needs to scale, it is very simple to move
the db server to another machine, as long as the connection string is in the
config file where you can easily change it to point to the new server.

Don't forget firewalls. You will want to have two firewall devices, so you
can create what is called a DMZ. Internet traffic passes over one firewall
to get to the web server. The web server communicates over the second
firewall to reach the database server.

Hope this helps,
--- Nick Malik

"ABC" <cdcer@hongkong.com> wrote in message
news:d618a781.0407240546.2b550ac@posting.google.com...
> If I have the following scenario, what should I do?
>
> The boss of a small company wants to competerize the daily operations.
>
> Say, he has the office in City A, but owns a factory and warehouse in
> City B. He wants to interconnect these locations by computer. He want
> to build a database to manage the stock, and query the warehouse
> status using browser when he goes online. What key issues that he
> should think of?
>
> 1. Database
> 2. Application server
> 3. Web server
> 4. Internet service
> 5. A main programming language
> 6. Web page
>
> Anything else?
>
> He wants the whole system developed by 1. Java in Windows platform or
> 2. Windows platform (without using Java), then, what are the most i)
> suitable (easy, convenient) ii) cheapest iii) common choice of above
> items?
>
> Actually, I know something like Oracle, MySQL, ... for database, but
> do not know which is the most appropriate selection.
>
> Thanks for your answers!