how do i do what i want to do?

[bisht_kamal]

hey guys,

i am back, once again with a question. i wish to create a web site or say a tool, that would make enable my pepole to get rid of the hassle of accessing data from our official web site.

we need to fetch data every day and the process is very very tedious and time consuming.

you need to login, arrange filter order, look for each agent record manually. i wish to make it all an automated process.

the only thing i do not know where to start and what to look for, i do not wish to create a full blown tool. just a tool that helps in fetching data and if possible the data be arranged in the Excel workbook.

we use excel 2000, and win 2000 sever and win2000.

Any ideas how to go about it.
thanks in advance
kamal

[valhallen]

how is the data stored / what kind of database do you use? SQL? Access? etc
what server side language do you wish to use asp? php?
how do you want to export the data? csv? xml?
are the queries going to be the same each day or will there be changing variables?
do they need to be run at the same time each day or ad hoc?

you will didn't give anywhere near enough info for me to supply a proper answer. However if i was doing it (adapt this as needed) I would set it up as so...

data stored in mySQL database
PHP script to pull data, sort and create a csv
script run at set times by a chron job
csv could be picked up and imported into excel whenever needed.

[Katja]

Okay, let's sum up... You have an official website that contains data. I assume this data is stored somewhere on this webserver. Probably in some database. Then why not retrieve the data directly from the source?

If you're using SQL Server for this data then you could add a stored procedure or view to the database that will provide the data in whatever way you like. (You need to have SQL knowledge, though.) I think it's even possible to have Excel connect to this database directly and thus always keep it's contents uptodate, but that really depends on the structure of your data and your system.

[SirDice]

Originally posted here by bisht_kamal
just a tool that helps in fetching data and if possible the data be arranged in the Excel workbook.

You could script it all together with perl. Use LWP::Simple to fetch the webpage, process it and use Win32::OLE to create an Excel sheet.

Activestate's ActivePerl is one of the best perl distributions for windows IMO.

[valhallen]

heh see without proper information people can only make educated guesses of what way would be best for you (hence why you are getting such a wide variety of solutions as people will propose what they are most comfortable working with as there is no constraints on the technology to be used)

But one thing they all have in common - in order to accomplish this you will need

1) A knowledge of databasing (if a database is being used)
2) A knowledge of server side scripting

however which database/scripting language you use is really down to your own knowledge and the server setup.