Ade

Hello all,

My cousin is the head of I.T something-or-other for Boots (a very large retail company here in the UK) and has been gived the task of finding a company to produce a Learning Management System for their internal training. It has to be accesible through the net.

If you don't know what an LMS is then get your ass over here.

Just wondering how everyone would go about tackling it if they were producing the system for the company. What language would you use? What database? What other resources would be required?

Don't worry, I'm not about to attempt this project (too much uni work anyway ) I'm just curious.

I would use PHP with a MySQL database, but that's all I know and therefor is my answer to everything! Honestly though don't know if PHP could handle something so complex?



Ta Ade

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Sane

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with your PHP/MySQL idea. I can not see that combination being insufficient. There may be some lessons where Java/Javascript helps a lot. Java plugins and clientside Javascript activities are usually neat things to have included on VLEs. Other then that, there isn't really much else to it. PHP is powerful enough to handle any server-side tasks within your apparent requirements.

Ade

Can you work Java with PHP? another general question of mine!

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Sane

It depends what you mean by "work it with PHP".

Java, I don't know Java. I assume there is support for reading websites. In which case you could contact any PHP page and parse the results. I don't see why you would ever need Java to interact with a PHP script, unless doing some sort of "high scores" idea.

Javascript, you can make it interact with a PHP script in certain ways. But probably not how you had in mind.

What did you have in mind exactly?

Ade

Nothing in particular, just general wonderings.

I mean after leaning c++ PHP seems kinda weak to me but I guess that's because of all the librarys you can access with C++.

When I say work with I mean like could you use java to fill in the gaps for things PHP can't handle.

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Sane

Nope. I'm not sure how strong you are on your terminology, but Java is a client-side programming language when used on the internet. You won't be using it for direct access of databases, forget anything to do with server related things. It's generally for interactive activities, where everything is calculated on the client's computer. Hope you get what I mean. :p

lectricpharaoh

Not entirely accurate. Yes, Java is usually used for client-side stuff, particularly applets, but you can use it for server-side code in the form of JSP, and I expect the popularity will grow as Sun pushes Java, and as more web servers add support.

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Sane

Oops, I kept saying plugin when I meant applet. :o

And when I said "for use on the internet", I was referring to applets.

Ade

So it's like Javascript in that way like? Whereas PHP code is executed before the client 'sees' the page Java is done while the page is being viewed?

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Sane

As far as I know.

However, a lot of people won't like seeing Java where it doesn't need to be used. Anyone who wants to see a Java plugin on a web page, will need to install the Java Runtime Environment. And now that I think of it, Java most definitely can interact with your server. I have seen online chat programs written in Java that do just that. Yet, it is not nearly as direct as PHP is.