in reply to Re: How to calculate development time?
in thread How to calculate development time?

Thanks for all the feedback from all of you.

I know it's a very general question, and impossible to answer, but you are monks after all. I really appreciate the speed of replies.

I have not decided on an ISP yet, but are looking for something in the UK with full CGI and MySQL support. at the moment Internetters seems like a good bet. I would appreciate other possible ISP's. I have worked with Internetters before, so that is probably why I would go with them. They hosted a site which I developed for my day job and it seems to be OK.

My biggest problems are:
1. I only have FTP access, no Telnet.
2. I don't have access to the Apache error files

Up till now it hasn't been the biggest problems since I developed everything on a development machine and tested it before I uploaded it. The development and hosting environments aren't exactly the same though, which creates a problem now and then.

I am however a bit worried about MySQL development on a remote host with no error logs. Is there any way I can see what is not working without the ubiquitous Internal Server Error message?

My next question regards searching. If I want to search through the MySQL DB, is it going to be as easy as:

SELECT * FROM jobs WHERE creation_date < $search_max_date

or do I need something like siteLevel.whatUseek.com that you suggested?

It's been a while since I did any SQL, but I'm sure that it's not going to be the biggest problem.

Here are a list of what I think needs to be done: (My solution in brackets, comments would be appreciated.)

1. User regestration ( .htaccess files, MySQL table for user profile from HTML form, basic CGI)
2. Employer registration (same as 1)
3. Upload jobs (MySQL table for jobs, linked to employer table. html form, basic CGI)
4. Remove jobs (same as 3)
5. Search (???, MySQL SELECT queries?)
6. Credit Card Billing for employers (No idea..., maybe use something like NetBanx, help would be appreciated.)

thanks for everything
-Siddartha

  • Comment on Re: Re: How to calculate development time?

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Re: Re: Re: How to calculate development time?
by Cirollo (Friar) on May 31, 2001 at 18:45 UTC
    I am however a bit worried about MySQL development on a remote host with no error logs. Is there any way I can see what is not working without the ubiquitous Internal Server Error message?

    Yes;
    use CGI::Carp qw/fatalsToBrowser/;

    This prints nice error messages to the browser; however, if your script dies before compiling, you just get a (fairly) unhelpful "compile error."

    If you don't have a command line, maybe you can do your developing on another box somewhere and then move everything to your host? I personally could not bear to write any decently sized script without the debugger.

[reply]
[d/l]
      Thanks, I'll try that.

      I do have a development box, so I can make sure that the syntax is correct and it can compile. I will need to test to see if this solves all my problems (probably not), but thanks for the input.

      My biggest problem however is not the Perl errors, but possible mySQL errors. I need to set up a testing environment with MySQL and start playing around, but I have no idea what is going to happen if MySQL has problems. Will MySQL return error codes to the CGI that I can catch, or will it just die?

      thanks for everyone's input. the whole thing doesn't seem so impossible anymore.

      -Siddartha

[reply]
        You should take a look at the Tricks with DBI node by btrott; it goes into some detail about error codes with DBI.

        MySQL should never "just die"; you might run into things like not being able to execute a bad SQL statement, but you should be able to get all the error details you need through the DBI module.

[reply]
Re: Re: Re: How to calculate development time?
by Anonymous Monk on Jun 04, 2001 at 20:13 UTC
    i would wholeheartedly recommend Positive Internet (www.positive-internet.com) if you are looking for an excellent Perl and Mysql hosting company in the UK.

    Having used a more well known host before Positive, i can state that the folk there are v helpful and the service is outstanding - they have even installed perl modules that they didn't have but that i wanted to use, which has been great.

    Tell them iain sent you if you go with them - they have a nice referral scheme too ;)

    also, i can't seem to locate an email address for you if you are looking for help via mail - anyone help?

[reply]

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