What technology to use?

[askohen]

Hi. I have been doing html for a number of years and have some very minor experience with javascript, XML, XSLT, and perl--though I am by no means a programmer. I want to make my pages more dynamic and powerful, mainly by incorperating database funtionality.

For example, I would like an html interface to access a database and display filtered results. I know I could do this with perl/cgi, but before I venture to really learn the process, I would like advice on what to use. There is so much out there. PHP, ASP, XSLT etc. I am fond of XML and XSLT but want to know what technology would be most useful to learn given my time constraints and which technology you all think will be most useful going forward. Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks.

[the tree]

I use PHP, it has a massive support community and if you're familiar with javascript then you'll like it's syntax. PHP is perfectly complemented by MySQL which I am learning

I think that it's all a matter of preference though.

[askohen]

Thanks for your input Tree. looked at your site, and we are both interested in many of the same things.

So my understanding is that PHP generally lets you insert your code into the markup, so that you don't have separate script files. Is that right?

Also can you use php to parse xml, or is xslt better for that?

[the tree]

Yeh you can insert php directly into markup which makes it particuarly useful for includes as well as more complicated things.

[Jona]

Originally posted by askohen
Also can you use php to parse xml, or is xslt better for that?

PHP has lots of XML-related functions, and it's always better to process your XML before sending HTML to the browser, since browser support for XML/XSLT is still a bit iffy.