Need advice: Storing images in a Product DB for a new website (with FrontPage)

P

Pierre B

Hi there,

My project:
Put up a webpage with a Product Database with thumbnail pictures of all
products with the possibility to show larger pictures and combine it with an
order management system / shopping cart (considering PayPal's shopping cart
tools)
The plan is to have 200 to 250 products at the beginning but if all goes as
planned, there would be continuous expansion at the rate of 25-50 new
products per week for a couple of years.
So I need to have the right solution from the start; I want to avoid dead
ends or capacity/performance problem that send me back to the drawing board
later in the project.

My setup:
- Ms-Access 2003 & Frontpage 2003 (wilt all service packs and updates)
- Web server with FrontPage extensions and ASP

My limitations:
I hate to code in whatever language, I'm real bad at it, so ideally there
should no coding involved or as little as possible and preferably from
available templates.


MS-Access Help describes 3 methods for storing images in a DataBase
- Embed images directly in an OLE Object field in a database table
- Embed or link to images in a database table
- Use VBA code to display images
The help file gives procedural steps for each but little advice on pros,
cons and pitfalls of each.

I read through the Access newsgroups; found no thread discussing my specific
question. However several threads discussed various problems: Pictures not
showing in the browser, MS-Access capacity limitations and several others
(with some very radical suggestions for fixing the problems described).
Nothing such as a clear path to the solution I need.
I've also made some tests with all 3 methods; they all seem to work in
Access (at least with a couple of records) but I don't know what would
happen with 2-3 or 4,000 records, on all browsers in use out there, etc...


What I need:
Advice from someone who's been there and done it (got the T-shirt) and can
actually recommend the best method and ideally could show (refer to) a
website built on that recommended method.
Obviously I need this web page to be usable by all web browsers available
out there, with as little security concerns as possible.

Thanks in advance,

Pierre
PS: I'm sure there are other products/platforms better suited for my
project, I have considered several before I chose Access/FrontPage. The main
reason for that choice: I don't want to code, I'm not a DBA and have no
access to one.
 
B

Brendan Reynolds

I expect it will probably be best not to store the images in the database,
as I expect that some non-trivial code would be required to extract the
images out of the database again before they could be displayed in a web
page. But really, you need to ask this question in a FrontPage forum. A web
page is not an Access app, and much of what you have read in the Access
newsgroups will not be applicable to your web page. The development
platforms are very, very different, and techniques that are appropriate in
one environment may be completely inappropriate in the other.
 

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