When we implement the search feature of the application, we are going to need to have a method specified by which the search engine searches and sorts the information in the database. One of the ways to improve searching and sorting is to use the index feature of MS Access. The index would be applied to a specific field (such as the date of an event) and would make searching the database more efficient. The index is applied to each value in the field based up on a preset condition, such as putting the dates in chronological order. Then, when searching or sorting, the engine returns results and then puts the indexes in order, thereby putting the field data in order.
(Note: This was written before implementation of the search page. We do now index certain fields.)
We feel that we have adequately normalized our database to provide the level of functionality desired by the organization. The database could be taken from first to second normal form for the purpose of this project, but would use up resources in needing to join tables together with the various data. Our contact with the organization also felt that while some data will be the same, the advantages of having a contact referenced to by the EVENT table instead of having the contact listed in both the CONTACT and EVENT tables do not outweigh the disadvantages of redundant data.
Implementing a VBScript version of our .asp application means that the computations for the system will be done on the server-side. If we had implemented a Javascript version of the .asp application pages, the computing would have been done on the client-side. This could use a little more investigation if we were concerned with enlarging the system due to the possibility of concurrent usage of the system which would tie up valuable server resources. At this time, we do not feel that client-side computing is as important as accurate computing. With Javascript, there is no standard that reaches across all of the web browsers (IE, Netscape, Opera, Mozilla, etc.) meaning that we would be unable to account for any differences in the Javascript language from browser to browser. Instead of running a Javascript check and telling the user to turn it on, and then risking errors due to the different versions, we went with server-side computing. The only alternative for Javascript would be to write a different version of our code for each individual web browser in existance - an option that we would never consider for this project.
That being said, we believe that client-side computing does provide some benefits when the Javascript works properly; however, we believe that our VBScript .asp application will be more accurate in computing the functions of the system and will also make the system easier for the system administrator to identify and fix any problems.
When a user changes information about an event, contact, or resource, the new event information is shown with the changed parts highlighted in red text. The code for this operation in the writeOutputField and writeOutputPhoneField functions is quite rough and could be done more efficiently. If we had time, we would look into this, but for now it works.
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