Need help on the language.

[sargehendricks]

Hey There:

I am VERY new to the whole application developement thing. I want to work on a side-project outside of work to use at the office if I can make it work. I have not been able to find an existing application that will do what I need without asking the company for hundreds of thousands of dollars... needless to say, the company is not very keen on that.

I want to create an application (in the best language) that will collect a data stream from multiple points across our network. That data stream needs to be conditionally parsed, and dumped into a database (SQL). I then want to be able to have a web interface that can be used to query and report on any of the data captured. I want to be able to provide security on that data (i.e. user x can see data appropriate to that user only... not data appropriate for user y). I also want to be able to create reports that can "drill down" to more granualar information.

I know, this is a huge project for a newbie, but if I don't do it, it won't be done. I need to know which language would be best to use for this project. Once I have that much info, I can begin the learning process. I don't want to begin learing Visual J# just to find that it can't do what I need (for example).

PLEASE HELP!!!

Thanks,

Sarge

[sargehendricks]

Okay, I haven't gotten any response on suggestions for a language to use, so I have decided on Visual Basic 2005. I have downloaded the VB 2005 Express with SQL 2005 Express and the MSDN libraries.

Now, a truely newbie question. Where do I start? Can someone simply direct me to a source for getting started in programming? I began a project for a Windows Application in VB2K5X, but the first thing that should be developed is a "service" that collects the data that the rest of the application will process. How do I go about building a service that will automatically start in Windows?

[Dobby]

What kinds of sources are you talking about collecting data from?

Also, have you done any kind of programming before? If not it might be an idea to look on http://rentacoder.com if you are looking for a quicker solution. If you are interested in programming however, then it sounds like you might have a good example to learn with but be prepared to have a long and painful few months!

You might want to look at http://rubyonrails.com for the website stuff. Really slick.

Edited February 17, 2006 by Dobby

[sargehendricks]

The source of the data is going to be phone systems (PBXs). The PBXs are obviously on our network via vendor designed NICs. The data that I am trying to capture is call detail records (CDR). This data is mostly numeric, with every field of data separated with a space. Each field, or column, of data is fixed width. I need to be able to caputre that data, add the IP address of the source and a record identifier on the end of each record. This will allow me to better parse the data and dump it into the database as necessary. The purpose of the souce IP is obvious. The purpose of the identifier is to provide a means of discerning which record is which, when we have CDR flowing in from 30 different sources at the same time.

I do want to learn how to code this application, because it will allow me to possibly write other apps to help my department. My interest is in making my life easier... not making money. It doesn't have to be pretty... it just has to work.

[Dobby]

It sounds like getting the data into a database will be your first goal. If the PBX has some kind of API this shouldn't be too hard. You can do a hell of a lot with relational databases so I'd also do a bit of reading up on this as well. Learn how to do queries on a database. Then you should be able to use Ruby on Rails or VB to get the stuff out. Rails will allow you to get a very simple web front end setup in no time but it's quite different to VB.

I'd never use VB these days. It's great to learn with but allows you to quickly produce unmaintainable code. That's not to say it won't suit your needs but remember where Visual Basic came from. BASIC actually stands for Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.

BTW don't rule out C# it may have a slightly steeper learning curve but it's not all that different to VB and it is considered the base .NET language. However you should in theory be able to do the same thing in either C# or VB but I'm not sure how true that is as I've not worked with VB.NET

Hope some of this stuff helped.

[sargehendricks]

Thanks for the advice. I don't really care which language I use. I just want it to work. I do have a lot of new info on VB.Net (2003 & 2005). Any suggestions on where to start on basic development concepts? I am very new, so I need to make sure that I begin the design phase properly. Thanks, again!!!!