Really vague query.

[InsomniaCalls]

Hi guys,

Sorry about this question in advance as it's stupidly vague and I'd guess impossible to answer without more details.

I'm in the planning stage of a project I have at work to centralise all of our support resources.

I'm the tech manager of a software support team and they're complaining that they have too many resources, meaning the available knowledge is spread too thin to find quickly on a call.

I don't have the option of changing the systems completely as they're all used in varying degrees globally and vouched for by people further up the chain.

What I'd like to do is find a way of searching all of these resources at once, specifically two SQL knowledge bases, then show the results in an HTML page.

I'm really not sure where to start and need to present a draft proposal before I can really get into the tech side in much detail.

Is it possible to embed the two PHP KB pages into a separate page and have the results from both shown in one/two frames at the bottom of the page?

Or would it be possible to write an application to query both databases and show the results in a webpage? If so, which language would you recommend?

I know basic VB but I've got a while to implement this so should be able to learn whatever language is needed in time to put this into place.

Again, sorry for this dumb ass question.

Treat it as a hypothetical query - can a webpage or application be written to post a query to two seperate MS SQL knowledge bases and return the results on one page?

Thanks in advance!

Si

 

[LazyManc]

The answer to your main question is yes, you can query more than one database and output the results on one page, or you can fetch the results of N pages and output them in N frames. The former is the preferable method.

If you're largely Microsoft in-house and you already know a bit of VB then ASP.net is probably the way to go. Alternatives are PHP / Ruby / Python / Perl / Java etc...

 

[Dj_Jestar]

The Answer: Setup a Wiki

 

[whitecrook]

The Answer: Setup a Wiki

That's what I was thinking. Until I read the question.

 

[Dj_Jestar]

I've read it 3 times now. Twice before I posted my last reply, and once more to be sure.

The Answer Mk2: Setup a Wiki.

 

[InsomniaCalls]

Thanks for the advice everyone.

Setup a Wiki.

I looked at this after your post and it looked like a good idea (I was looking at the PMWiki system) but our current knowledge bases cover around 10,000 articles.
Unless you know of a way to import xhtml and css formatted pages into a wiki type format, or have the wiki front end directly query the two separate SQL databases it'll be too much work to setup and maintain.

Looking at an alternative to a website based utility, I'm considering building a standalone application with a form and a browser window - the form specifies the search criteria (which knowledge bases to search and keywords) and the browser windows displays the results.

Do you think that could be built in VB.NET or do you have a better suggestion?