ASP help needed!!! lol i'm a noob

[Mao]

i have no idea where this topic belongs, so i'll just put it up here...

PPL PLZ HELP! seeing that everyone here all have some kind of superpowers...

i'm being dragged by the cat of curiosity to the ever-changing realm of web development, it is bizzare, new, very different from Visual Basics that i am familiar with, so i decided to start with something i thought i'd be comfortable with, ASP...

until the point when i tried to connect that with an Access database:

could someone please explain what a DNS is? how it is used? what are the differences between a DNS connection and a DNS-less connection, what are the syntax and codes for connecting to a database, and do i seriously need a Windoes NT/2000 server (i have Macromedia Cold-Fusion) to make it work?

if anyone could answer those questions it'll be ace and i will dedicate a few seconds of my life granting you some newly-appointed karma 

until then... i am still lost...

[Daniel15]

so i decided to start with something i thought i'd be comfortable with, ASP...

ASP's way old and I wouldn't recommend it. I'd suggest to learn PHP, or if you still want to use ASP, ASP.NET.

could someone please explain what a DNS is? how it is used? what are the differences between a DNS connection and a DNS-less connection, what are the syntax and codes for connecting to a database, and do i seriously need a Windoes NT/2000 server (i have Macromedia Cold-Fusion) to make it work?

You mean DSN, DNS is completely different. And I have no idea, the last time I used ASP was when it was actually used by a few people, I switched to PHP in 2003.
Try searching in Google?
And ColdFusion is an entierly unrelated programming language.

[Mao]

siiiiigh, that's my noobishness
I'm learning ASP (well, .NET now since that i've finally managed to install IIS) only coz i already know VB (which isnt that hard at all... sigh, i'm just too lazy to pick up another language)
what kinda server technology do i need to play around with php then?

ty

[Daniel15]

what kinda server technology do i need to play around with php then?

Any HTTP server will do, IIS works fine. Instructions for PHP on IIS are at http://au.php.net/manual/en/install.windows.iis.php, it's quite involved though (if you use IIS, you might need to get help from someone more experienced with it).

Seeing as you're a beginner, you might want to look into XAMPP. It's a package of Apache, MySQL and PHP, all preconfigured and ready to use. Simply install the package and everything "just works"

[Mao]

THANKX HEAPS!!!!! here's some kudos

and for the sake of being a pain and squeezing resources out of u, is IIS the only ASP/ASP.NET run on? or is there some fancy server software that i can install (for free) to run ASP/ASP.NET, coz my home comp is running xp home (yes, i'm ancient) and i cant install it, and really cbf tracking down a windows server 2000 disk to do it the dodgy way... so....

thanks anyways!

[Daniel15]

is IIS the only ASP/ASP.NET run on?

I believe so. There's solutions to run classic ASP (not ASP.NET) on Apache, but they're not too reliable
I haven't used it in ages

[joshuamorgan]

You can run IIS on Windows XP Professional, however.

[Daniel15]

Listen to joshuamorgan, he's smarter than me.
Is it actually on the Windows XP CD, Joshua? Or does it have to be downloaded or something?

[joshuamorgan]

It ships with Windows XP Professional - you can install it via Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Components (or something to that extent).

[Mao]

loll that's kinda a problem, coz i got win xp home, and microsoft somehow decided that "home" edition sucks...
there are various articles that suggest i could install IIS on xp home, but i need the win server 2000 disk... which i really cbf
so now i'll have to wait a couple months for some more details on that empty promise of mr rudd's in relation to laptop rebates... sigh (vista business run IIS right?)

ty

[Daniel15]

microsoft somehow decided that "home" edition sucks...

That's not true, they decided that all editions suck

* Daniel15 hides.

[AppleXY]

microsoft somehow decided that "home" edition sucks...

That's not true, they decided that all editions suck

* Daniel15 hides.

QFT. Microsoft has dirty dirty marketing tricks and have a poor design team for hardware devices. LOL, the Zune 2 still looks awful, what a piece of crap lol.

As for Vista; theres Home, Home Premium, Enterprise, Business, Ultimate and it doesn't stop there. How many [censored] [censored] versions do you need :p I betcha computer N00000BS will purchase the 'ultimate' version  just to find out that half of the 'ultimate' features are not used --- comparable to Home Premium or Basic. Its so pathetic. Seriously, $600 gone down the effin drain.

I remember Steve Jobs ridiculing Windows Vista's versions. "We have Mac OS X Leopard Basic, Premium, Enterprise and Ultimate all for $129, I'm pretty sure people will choose the ultimate version LOOOL"

[joshuamorgan]

http://adamv.com/dev/articles/iis-on-xp-home offers instructions on how to install IIS on Windows XP Home Edition (a Windows 2000 CD-ROM is required though).

Windows XP Professional, as I mentioned before, offers IIS 'out-of-the-box'. If possible, try and upgrade to XP Professional, and then install IIS (or find your 2000 CD-ROM and follow the instructions on the site above).

[BenBenMan]

Another alternative, in Visual Studio 2005 and newer (including express editions) it includes a test web server which will run on XP Home. However you won't be able to use it when you're not running Visual Studio (ie you won't be able to host a site with it, unless you left visual studio open all the time).

If your computer is fast enough you could get Virtual PC* from Microsoft's website and download a Virtual PC image of Windows Server 2003. Then you'd have your own virtual server to play with, which would include IIS.





* Disclaimer: Virtual PC sucks. VirtualBox is better.

[Mao]

lol....right
fullheartedly agrees with *all microsoft sucks*
hahaha...

as for all the troubles i might have to go through to get IIS on xp home, i'll wait a couple months to get IIS on vista business... lol