Exercises, Questions, and Projects

1. Enhance the favorites application to prevent redundant entries. You can decide whether that means redundant titles, or redundant titles and descriptions. You will need to do a select query and check the number of rows of the returned recordset.

2. Write scripts, in PHP and ASP, to display the contents of the favorites table, and present a form in which the user can designate an entry to delete from the table. You can choose to display the favorite_id for each record. The query to be sent to the database would take the form: “Delete from favorites where favorite_id=” followed by the number entered into the form surrounded by single quotes.

3. Build a slightly different favorites application by changing the description field to designate one of several predefined categories. Then, build a form and handler combination in which people can select the category desired for showing. Use a select with the distinct clause to get a list of distinct categories.

4. Go to the Web and find out about the ODBC library for PHP. You should then be able to write an application in which PHP script accesses an Access database.

5. Go to the Web and find out about using ASP with another DBMS, such as SQL Server.

6. Go to the Web and research the issue of DSN versus DSN-less connections. Your server crew might not give you a choice, but this will help you understand the issues, or at least the jargon.