[thelist] ASP/open source/static/dynamic sites pro's and con's

[Luther, Ron]

Hi Tony,


I dunno ... sometimes folks want "unreasonable" things ... and sometimes
they don't.

>From what you've shared ... their concept isn't sounding worth arguing
with them over.  I think I'd be more inclined to do it their way ....
and end up cashing that check!

[I have a pretty good idea of the kind of home-grown system you are
talking about ... (I once built a similar templated system to produce
static pages from an Access database.  I had ASP locally - but my host
at the time didn't support ASP.) ... it can produce a pretty nice site.]

When used with SSIs - it was even 'mostly' quickly updateable.  However,
any significant design element change meant regenerating a boatload of
pages and FTPing them up to the live site ... and remembering which
pages were updated and which still had to get done.


Building a few ASP 'template' pages actually strikes me as a 'simpler'
and potentially (from a client maintenance perspective) 'more elegant'
solution than the static route.


... but you were looking for 'cons' to strengthen your position ...
Hmmmm ... 'bout all I got is (a) the added expense of (possibly) needing
a 'higher-powered' database than Access if they intend on generating a
lot of traffic  [Hosts generally charge setup and monthly fees for you
to have access to a database like MS-SQL7 or Oracle.], and (b) the
potential to run into a "second-level" of outages -- the web-server is
"up", but the database daemon is "down".

Best I got for ya today,

{If well-built, I don't think the speed and 'indexability' should be big
issues. It sounds like they are providing "public" information - so
security shouldn't be too big an issue either.  I think your best
arguments might be 'cost' and 'reliability'.}


RonL.

(Good Luck!)


-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Crockford [mailto:tonyc at boldfish.co.uk]


The project requirement is to create a web site that will:

allow 6 different levels of presentation material, dependent on user
selection (learning depth, basically, from pre-school to researchers)

over nine different themes (pathways or trails)

to end up accessing over 6,000 digitised images / video / sound and 3d
models etc.

They are suggesting using ASP to deliver pages based on user selection,
dynamically.