I have been searching these articles for days now and have found bits and pieces of info that help, but overall they don't provide enough info to get someone from 0 to finish in creating and utilizing a database. Most responses are something like: "Configure ODBC, that will fix your problem" ... which for -most- of us, doesn't help. I've read through lengthy articles and have a much better understanding of what is going on, but am still having problems figuring out -exactly- what I need to do to get my database working.
I currently have a single php that handles the entire site, it generates the web output based on variables passed. I want to use a database to store product info, which as I understand it, is just another file. IF I can finish this, I will have completed an entire website that consists of only two files. Here are some of the concerns/problems:
Our server runs Apache and is not local, so unless I am misunderstanding, configuring ODBC in my windows 2000 is pretty irrelevant. I have looked into both Msaccess and MySQL to handle the database. Msaccess seems to be the easiest choice because I can create the database locally and then upload it directly to the server. In theory then, php will just read from the access file. I have no use at this time for writing anything to the database file once live. Where does ODBC and MySQL come into play then? What I read on scripting php to read the file seems to assume the server just knows where the database is, which isn't right. The more I read about this the more confused I am becoming. Is there an easier way to pull of what I am trying to do?
Thanks,
