A project I am embarking upon is relatively straightforward in principle but for one hurdle to be overcome. The question I put forward that needs answering, what programmable software would be best suited.

The project is dbase orientated. I say that because I have out lined the project using Microsoft Access and the concept of the project is: - information catalogue, product catalogue format, customer related and document repository. The final software package will be issued on CD–Rom.

It is the intension recipients of the software will receive updates for the software via a web site. Along with what now is an innovation of allowing users initially country wide but ultimately worldwide to share information on the very subject?

So summarising a software language to suite a software package to be issued on CD-Rom format, to create and function on a web site for the downloading of software updates and the facilities to share data information.

Your guidance would be much appreciated.

I would suggest you look into .NET. You can build very solid applications (web and client) that are web enabled using web services. The web services can provide data access over HTTP in a very simple way that both a web application and a client application can access. You could also use the web service for "update checking".

With a web driven software scenario like this, .NET makes it VERY easy to update your client based applications because there is no fancy tasks required for installing or updating the client's instance of the program. One of the features of .NET is what they call "XCOPY Deployment". All you have to do is copy the files to the program directory.

Peter
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Work smarter, not harder.

Yeah, I second that.

A while ago (about two years or so), I looked into the same issue (I even posted a question here). We had similar requirements: the client had a product catalog that they wanted to share on CD-Rom. However, the contents had to be updateable through the web by by world-wide customers.

We investigated a custom C++ or Visual Basic application that used the Microsoft Web Browser control to render the pages. Before we loaded each page from CD, we checked whether the same file was present on disk (which meant an updated version).

It ended up as quite a messy solution, with too many separate applications.
Now, with .NET, I think we could have offered a cleaner solution. Using Web Services for the Updates, Windows Forms with a Web Browser for the initial pages and Web Forms for a discussion forum (get a forum including source for free at www.asp.net) seems like a smart thing to do.


Cheers,

Imar



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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.