Advice from the gurus of Web 2.0 required

[andrewducker]

We're currently seeing a resurgence of collaboration software - I've seen Word and Excel clones for the web. But I'm not seeing anyone allowing for structured data - is there anyone out there selling access to a MySQL database with a pretty front end stuck on the front of it, so that people can share lists of things?

The data is currently being stored in Excel spreadsheets being emailed back and forth, and frankly it's (a) perfect for sticking in a database table, as it's just text stored in columns and (b)silly to be emailing it back and forth rather than sticking it on a server. But nobody seems to be selling pretty front ends for structured lists...

Anyone help me with this?

Comments

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Agree w/above - Ruby on Rails should do the trick fairly easily if you have that platform.

.NET also has their generic DataGrid / DataList for web access. At its most basic level, you bind it to a DataSet (which you can connect to MySql using a standard SQL query and the System.Data.OleDb.DataAdapter object), and it generates the HTML layout. You can automate paging, editing, and other cool stuff.

The problem is if you want to get even slightly away from what Microsoft thinks you want, you have to tear out all that automated code and start hacking at it. I hear .NET 2.0 has more flexibility, but haven't messed with that lately.

At the most base level, you can port out MySql to XML, and then use XSLT to generate a web page. However, having the ability to either edit that XML, or provide continuous integration between MySql and XML would be kind of a pain.