Web based application??

[Dukat]

ok guys, long story, but I'd like to know what you people define as a "web based application"

I was just wondering, as I need to make one for an assignment at college and could do with a better idea as to what one is.

I've looked at the definitions given by several search engines, and I've looked for as many different sources on this as possible, however the course I'm on hasnt been run before - so there isnt any "sample work" and so we have no way of basing our definitions against those of the examiners.

Because its the first the the course has run, the teacher has about as much idea on this as we do (read: not much of an idea at all). We've got a vague idea, but pinning down the definition is rather tricky, and as we have to make one,I thought that maybe knowing what one was might be a good idea

There are 5 people left on my course, all of which are asking the same question, I cover the rant side of this in aoln's rant thread - its a right pain in the arse but asking here seems like the best idea to me I mean you lot are all intelligent, bright people? aren't you? ......... yeah well ok but it still seems better than just asking google!


I'd assumed an example of a web application would be somthing like a forum, a search engine or somthing that provides some service over http. I have in mind a system for a company where customers would beable to register, sign in, submit orders, edit orders and view current orders (among other things), does this sound about right?

 

[Outlander]

web based application is applying for a job online

or K-Y for nerds

sorry was bored

 

[cHodAX]

Will point Docwolfe at this thread as soon as he comes onto MSN, he might be able to advise you.

 

[Hansmoleman]

I define it as something which is done on IExplorer which can be done using a normal progam, i.e. webmessenger vs MSN

 

[Aiteal]

HTML based interface
Embedded java applet
Embedded activeX control
Java web start application

Normally it is an application launched from a browser, but the actual GUI can be something other than html, its just that html is the most popular

The buisness process is entirely upto you

But be a proper doac nerd and just write a few asp pages/php pages/java servlets that parse and display the Mythic XML pages, add a lil serverside sorting/filtering of the xml based on user defined criteria and bob's yer uncle
(or just do it with msxml parser built into iexplorer)

If you want downloadable sample code you can have my 5 years worth of my badly written java xml/soap messaging shite
or alternatively goto www.wrox.com and download the sample code from a book based on your prefered language/webserver
ASP is probably the easiest to get into for a beginner

 

[Dukat]

Cheers for the quick response everyone!

HTML based interface
Embedded java applet
Embedded activeX control
Java web start application

Normally it is an application launched from a browser, but the actual GUI can be something other than html, its just that html is the most popular

The buisness process is entirely upto you

But be a proper doac nerd and just write a few asp pages/php pages/java servlets that parse and display the Mythic XML pages, add a lil serverside sorting/filtering of the xml based on user defined criteria and bob's yer uncle
(or just do it with msxml parser built into iexplorer)

If you want downloadable sample code you can have my 5 years worth of my badly written java xml/soap messaging shite
or alternatively goto www.wrox.com and download the sample code from a book based on your prefered language/webserver
ASP is probably the easiest to get into for a beginner

Ahh brilliant cheers - really helps, will definately look at doing a daoc stats service if I can get hold of some of the xml pages, will have to add a "If [playername] = Dukat then...." method in there so I can finally get l33t st4ts!!

The main thing was wondering how much it needs to be - my teacher didnt know if just mounting a "register - login - submit - edit" system on a website would be enough to be classified as a web based application.

Will point Docwolfe at this thread as soon as he comes onto MSN, he might be able to advise you.

Cheers for that, all help much appreciated! this college red-tape stuff is getting a little mad lately, cant wait to get finished

 

[DocWolfe]

Will point Docwolfe at this thread as soon as he comes onto MSN, he might be able to advise you.

You would, but you need to be on MSN to tell me to look at this thread.

Basically a web based application is an application that is delivered by a web server over a network, such as the internet.

So things, like webmail, auction sites like ebay, forums, search engines, online banking. They are all web based. One of the main advantages of web based applications are that they require no installation, and are built ontop of existing protcols like HTTP.

Like Aiteal says, your looking at making something that produces dynamic content, such as php/asp/cgi and probably something usuing databases.

Seems a bit harsh to me, the teacher throwing you into the deep end like this. How the fuck are they expected to mark something they dont understand? I'm doing Computer Science + Distributed Systems at university.

If you've never done anything kind of programming before, you may struggle with the concept of the semantics but after you do, you'll find all high-level programming languages have pretty much the same semantics, so its faily easy to swap between them.

What sort of time frame have you got to complete this project? Hope it's long enough if you need to learn asp/php

If it's a short deadline I would recommend doing something as simple as a dynamically updatable news page or a guestbook or something like that. Shouldn't be too hard as a beginner. Just need a html/php form, someway of storing the information (maybe xml/textfile? Not necessarily a SQL database) and a html/php page displaying the information, that reads the storage file.

### By the way cHo, I'm typing this from my mates computer coz my monitor died today. It started flickering like it was being degaussed then bang, the screen when black and it started making a whirring noise and the power light kept pulsing. ordered a nice Samsung SM930BF 19" LCD Monitor

 

[Dukat]

You would, but you need to be on MSN to tell me to look at this thread.

Basically a web based application is an application that is delivered by a web server over a network, such as the internet.

So things, like webmail, auction sites like ebay, forums, search engines, online banking. They are all web based. One of the main advantages of web based applications are that they require no installation, and are built ontop of existing protcols like HTTP.

Like Aiteal says, your looking at making something that produces dynamic content, such as php/asp/cgi and probably something usuing databases.

Seems a bit harsh to me, the teacher throwing you into the deep end like this. How the fuck are they expected to mark something they dont understand? I'm doing Computer Science + Distributed Systems at university.

If you've never done anything kind of programming before, you may struggle with the concept of the semantics but after you do, you'll find all high-level programming languages have pretty much the same semantics, so its faily easy to swap between them.

What sort of time frame have you got to complete this project? Hope it's long enough if you need to learn asp/php

If it's a short deadline I would recommend doing something as simple as a dynamically updatable news page or a guestbook or something like that. Shouldn't be too hard as a beginner. Just need a html/php form, someway of storing the information (maybe xml/textfile? Not necessarily a SQL database) and a html/php page displaying the information, that reads the storage file.

### By the way cHo, I'm typing this from my mates computer coz my monitor died today. It started flickering like it was being degaussed then bang, the screen when black and it started making a whirring noise and the power light kept pulsing. ordered a nice Samsung SM930BF 19" LCD Monitor

ahh cheers for that, clears it up alot!

Aye about the teacher side of things - this years been rather silly, a "guinea pig" course - a "Diploma in Higher Education", supposedly the new "Higher National Diploma", its the first time the college I am at is running it, so things are rather "up in the air" atm.

The problem is, every single year apart from my first year has been like this, a new course at the college and we get to have the joy of being the first group to do it. This is my fifth year, so hopefully once I've achieved a HND - sorry "Dip HE" - then I'll be out of there and avoiding this education lark as much as possible.

From what I gather this application needs to be somthing fairly complex, seeing as we've done next to nothing in ASP, its going to be a fair bit of a struggle. I've done loads in HTML, love the language, survived up to now hardcoding it all in notepad, but now they're making us use dreamweaver, so i'll have to learn that as well

Think the deadline is christmas - so 50 or so days. Going to be a tough one - even more so as we only got the confirmed assignment brief today.

I'll sort something out, thanks alot for the information though - really has cleared that side of things up

 

[Aiteal]

Free ASP hosting with MS Access DB( ) support
http://www.1asphost.com/webhosting/webhosting_free.html

start with the simple tutorials at
http://www.w3schools.com/asp/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/ado/default.asp
http://www.asptutorial.info/
for the basics

And I wouild really recommend a good Wrox book
The real nice thing about wrox books is they teach you by showing you how to build sample applications, such as guestbooks, online shopping carts, message boards etc
ASP will be easy enough for you to pick up as the server side scripting language dosn't confuse beginners with crazy notions like data types
IIS (the web server that runs ASP pages) is easy to instal on windows.
Havent done any ASP myself in about 4 or 5 years, but if you have any probs drop me a PM

Havent done much php myself, as I concentrate on server side java and soap messaging in my job, but I'm sure there are plenty of php gurus on FH and elsewhere on the web. Due to the natures of the php server engine and the fact that the mysql db (most commonly used DB with php) is free, it has alot of advocates only too happy to show you the light and get ppl starting out in their web-application development path to use php/mysql as opposed to asp/ms access

 

[DocWolfe]

Free ASP hosting with MS Access DB( ) support
http://www.1asphost.com/webhosting/webhosting_free.html

start with the simple tutorials at
http://www.w3schools.com/asp/default.asp
http://www.w3schools.com/ado/default.asp
http://www.asptutorial.info/
for the basics

And I wouild really recommend a good Wrox book
The real nice thing about wrox books is they teach you by showing you how to build sample applications, such as guestbooks, online shopping carts, message boards etc
ASP will be easy enough for you to pick up as the server side scripting language dosn't confuse beginners with crazy notions like data types
IIS (the web server that runs ASP pages) is easy to instal on windows.
Havent done any ASP myself in about 4 or 5 years, but if you have any probs drop me a PM

Havent done much php myself, as I concentrate on server side java and soap messaging in my job, but I'm sure there are plenty of php gurus on FH and elsewhere on the web. Due to the natures of the php server engine and the fact that the mysql db (most commonly used DB with php) is free, it has alot of advocates only too happy to show you the light and get ppl starting out in their web-application development path to use php/mysql as opposed to asp/ms access

ASP .net has replaced ASP, he's prolly best learning how to use that, it encorporates alot of new features and moves away from the VBscript type semantics. I havent actually tried to use it myself, similarly to you I haven't used asp in a couple of years, but also I haven't done any php in a while either being at university you get pulled into concentrating on one particlar area, like Java, you can't keep up with everything else.

As well as Wrox, I would suggest the O'Reilly Books, and some of the SAM's teach yourself... books are good too.