DB

One idea on that table scan – there’s a coord system that can be converted to some kind of grid system (forgot the name, saw it while reading about GPS). Basically, each loc could have a Grid ID. Then, we could do a initial select on that grid (which I think can be figured out much easier than the distance thing), THEN do the distance thing inside of that grid... something or other like that.

I’ve gotten the initial DB stored proc stuff written (which was a pain. I hate ASP/VBScript. Can’t wait to go to ASP.NET. I’ve got all that stuff in VB components, but had to convert to script as I won’t be able to put COM stuff up on the initial site).

I almost went to .NET over the weekend. It appears to be a hugely superior environment over ASP/VBScript. I’d do it… but if I do, then I’m going to limit what I can put up on my domain. I *THINK* CIHost is going to allow for .Net stuff, but they won’t allow DLL’s I’m sure. I still might do it, as the basic web mechanics seem to be a lot better… have to wait and see.

Anyway, I have an ASP page that can add a loc, and another that can find locs based on feet from a passed loc. I’ve got wrapper functions that any page can call to do this (so they’re functions that wrap around the Stored Proc Stuff). Those wrappers will contain all the stuff I consider to be middle tier. If this thing takes off, all of that will move to COM (Or some .NET thing).

4/07/02

Well, buying a house impacted the amount of time I had to work on AE the last couple of weeks 

Sat down tonight and just started working through the basic web site. Finished up the tables (and connections between them), wrote a few stored procs, added the DB of ZIP codes and Country Names, and an ASP Add Location page that actually LOOKS nice, and used the two DB’s (via stored procs).

I’ve broken the site up into three conceptual parts, Web, Middle Tier, and Stored Procs. They allow for some separation, which will let me change how things work later.

The Web part is straight ASP, and knows nothing about the DB. It makes calls to the Middle Tier right now. The calls could easily be converted to COM or whatever; right now they are just server side VBScript.

The Middle Tier is also just VBScript that wraps around the data. The actual access to the data is exclusively via stored procedures.

I’m just going to work through the basic web site, get it up and running. I’ll then work on the XML and a test MFC (.NET?) application that used the site as a remote application. Then it’s off to GPS land… :P