Can’t win for losing

I mentioned the other day the quotations database I have.

My biggest problem that I have with it (aside from its care and feeding) is actually publishing the damned thing. I keep it in Access, but translating from that to some nice, simple static web pages is an ongoing lesson in frustration.

First of all, you can’t. Access doesn’t want to produce static web pages. It wants to generate some sort of active web page, with scroll buttons and searching this-n-that, and acts on the assumption that you’re running on an IIS server with all sorts of other Micro$oft bells and whistles installed.

(Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.)

Well, really, it will actually do a static page. Or a set of them, as it will take the report/query and “print” it onto multiple web pages.

I don’t want that. I want all of the quotes by authors whose last names begin with “B” to appear on the “B” page. A single page. Should be simple. ‘Tis not.

I have gotten around this for the past few years by outputting the quotations through a report that has the frelling HTML codes embedded in it, and saving that report to a text file, then massaging that file further (correcting the odd artifacts this approach adds) with all the proper formatting into an HTML file, then uploading that.

You can see why I only publish an updated version once a year or so.

I have a MySQL database on my host. I don’t know how to use it, and I’m not sure I want to go to the effort of moving my quite-functional(-except-for-the-frelling-output) Access database onto a strange, hosted platform, then learn how to present from MySQL into HTML.

It occured to me, though, a couple of days ago that Access can output to XML. And, hey, XML is this universal databasey kind of thing that I should be able to format a nice front-end to and solve my problems. This would allow me, among other things, to more frequently update the online version.

Just one catch. The frelling thing doesn’t work.

If I start with a clean database, I can export a simple table to XML. But when I do it from my WIST database, it crashes. “So sorry!” the little dialog box exclaims. “An unexpected error has crashed Access. Do you want to recover your database and send us a report about it again which will have all the effect that pressing the crosswalk button a dozen times has on making the signal change faster?”

I’ve upgraded everything to the latest release (probably my first mistake), and it just frelling doesn’t work. I’ve imported the tables into a fresh database. It works a few times, then starts crashing (stupid Micro$oft POS).

I am sure there is a better solution.

I’m just grumpily stumped as to what it is at the moment.