question about creating a searchable database for a small library

[Simon]

Hi all,

The organisation which I work for has a small library of maybe 100 DVDs and
200 books. I would like to create a database of the DVDs and books with
fields like title, author / director, description, and allow users to search
the database through a webpage.

However, while I have experience in HTML and Visual Basic programming, I
have no experience in this kind of programming. I do however have a thick
book on PHP and MySQL (PHP and MySQL Web Development, Welling and Thomson,
SAMS press) and look forward to the challenge of learning a bit of PHP and
MySQL.

So, the first question that I'd be grateful if you could answer is: would
creating this database and the PHP script with which it would be searched be
a fairly easy task? Or would it be quite difficult, given my lack of
experience? How many days of straight programming do you think it would it
take, learning as I go? How do I get started?

The second question is, given that it is viable, are there any hints or tips
that you could give me? An outline of the script required would be great.
Are there any kinda scalability issues that I should consider when creating
this script? What things could go wrong with such a script? I know this is
kinda a vague question, sorry; I expect that when I actually start writing
the script I'll have a better idea of the issues I'm prematurely worrying
about.

Thanks very much for your input and opinion. Apologies for the
cross-posting, hope it doesn't bother anyone.

Kind regards
Simon

[Steven Stern]

On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 10:54:10 GMT (more or less), "Simon"
<everythingiwantedyoutobeno.spam@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>The organisation which I work for has a small library of maybe 100 DVDs and
>200 books. I would like to create a database of the DVDs and books with
>fields like title, author / director, description, and allow users to search
>the database through a webpage.
>
>However, while I have experience in HTML and Visual Basic programming, I
>have no experience in this kind of programming. I do however have a thick
>book on PHP and MySQL (PHP and MySQL Web Development, Welling and Thomson,
>SAMS press) and look forward to the challenge of learning a bit of PHP and
>MySQL.
>
>So, the first question that I'd be grateful if you could answer is: would
>creating this database and the PHP script with which it would be searched be
>a fairly easy task? Or would it be quite difficult, given my lack of
>experience? How many days of straight programming do you think it would it
>take, learning as I go? How do I get started?
>
>The second question is, given that it is viable, are there any hints or tips
>that you could give me? An outline of the script required would be great.
>Are there any kinda scalability issues that I should consider when creating
>this script? What things could go wrong with such a script? I know this is
>kinda a vague question, sorry; I expect that when I actually start writing
>the script I'll have a better idea of the issues I'm prematurely worrying
>about.

IMHO, setting up the database is the easy part. Settingup the forms with all
the necessary fields is the tedious part. Programming is the interesting
part.

If you google about a bit, you'll probably find many of the building blocks.
I like using a PHP library called EZ_SQL to encapsulate all of the database
bookkeeping stuff. You pass it a query and get results. It handles the
connections, etc. See [url]http://www.jvmultimedia.com/[/url]

On a learning as you program basis, give yourself a day to get the basics and
follow a lot of blind leads and a couple more days to get the first draft
system online.