Database question (I think)

[racerboy]

I am new here and posted this in the HTML forum and they told me to post it here (my host suppors asp/mysql). Here goes:

I have a client who runs a DJ service. He would like for his clients to visit the protected area of his site to be able to access his “song list”, select songs from the list, and then send an email with these songs. I have the list in Excel/CSV format, but do not want to offer visitors (even clients) the ability to download the file and sort it themselves. Apparently, DJ song lists are tightly guarded. Any suggestions on the best way to allow the list to be sorted “on the fly” (by artist, genre, etc.) by the client without allowing a download of the file? Not sure if this would require some ODBC feature (which I’m just starting to learn).

Thanks for any suggestions.

[phpnovice]

Yes, ODBC can be used to read an Excel spreadsheet and provide server-side ordering abilities so that your ASP code can build that ordered data out to an HTML table for presentation in a client browser. While JavaScript can be used, client-side, to sort the data, I would not recommend this approach. 'Tis better to let the visitor click on a column header that sends the sort request to the server side for subsequent processing.

[racerboy]

Thanks phpnovice,
any recommendations on where I can go to learn more about how to perform this task?

racerboy

[phpnovice]

I found out that you can't use the Excel ODBC driver for CSV files. However, this might be a good start:

http://www.able-consulting.com/MDAC/ADO/Connection/ODBC_DSNLess.htm#ODBCDriverForText