put the database online

It all started with a simple question of collecting a few thousand names for my organization. These names are to be linked with cascading geographical entities and they are lying in a few tables in an access file with neat primary keys. All I want to do was to put the input data form of access on web. I had read somewhere that access can be split into a backend and a frontend and the latter can be put online. But my brief search could not retrieve any results on that line.

Then I reached osalt.com, one of my favourite destinations to find out opensource programmes. This site gives info on open source alternatives to commercial softwares. They had listed wavemaker as the foremost contender to  MS Access. The video accompanying the programme and reviews increased my expectations. I installed the programme, it didn't create any shortcuts on the desktop and I executed it from the start menu. An unassuming start screen appeared requesting to set the project directory and after two unsuccessful attempts resulting in some java error I am able to do it with the default directory. Then it worked on its own and appeared as a new tab in the browser. Take a look at this picture

The wavemaker site hosts a tutorial to migrate the access data using an inbuilt database engine. However I felt that I should be using a mysql backend to harness the full potential. Thus began my second leg of journey. My aim was to create a few tables and and put the access data in them. Mysql has replaced their query browser with a GUI tool called Mysql Workbench. This has made the creation and manipulation of data a lot easier. A commendable tutorial document is shipped within the programme itself and that can be accessed from the 'doc library' tab in the homescreen.