Re: Sub-initiate needs help getting started

[johndageek]

Welcome to the sea of programming. Based on your statement, priorities need to be set.

Base unsderstanding - the evil scary program runs and does it's thing in an acceptable manner. You have little or no programming experience, let alone how these systems fit together. There is a systems person or group who understand and keep the database and web servers al running and in tip top shape:)

If the above is not true and you are the sole IT person, or most knowlageable it person the company has, let us know and we will try a different tack.

You do not have time to flail around learning perljavascriptsqlhtmlandotherbuzzwords.

First priority - get the following information:
1) What kind of database is in use (oracle, mysql etc) and version.
2) What webserver are we running? (apache, Windows etc) and version
3) Are we on the intranet or internet? (security is the issue here).
4) What information is on the reports from the evil program.

Now small step 1) The database, this is your friend in whom all good things are stored. You will want a client connection to the database (sqlplus, toad or torra for oracle). You will use this tool to access the database, get information about how tables are set up, and test your sql statements. Have them set you up with an account for the live database and the test database - you do have a test database I hope??? Ask the database people how to list the tables and columns in the database you will be using. Once you can see the tables and column names, try a select clause to pull some of the data out. You will need to find how the tables are connected. Run the evil report then try to pull the same information with sql.

Having pulled the data successfully (yes I would suggest several tests) Write some perl code using DBI to connect to your database using the same sql statements from above. Dont worry about html or formatting, just get the perl program to pull the data and print it out from a command line.

Success!

Now all you need to do is format with html, our esteemed local monks are much more familiar with packages to help you in this area than I am.

Good Luck!
thegeek