request for help - sofware dummy here

M

markus12

New Member
Joined
Oct 15, 2011
Messages
6
Reaction score
0
I'm not sure if this is the appropriate forum to post this question. If not, kindly forgive me for my ignorance.

I plan to build a software product with the help of programmers. The idea is to feed basic contact data into a database and sms people based on certain parameters, date/time for example (not spam, essentially solicited). Prior to employing someone, I need to know what kind of platform would be apt for developing this kind of s/w. Can you please help me in figuring this out? How long would it take to come up with a product (basic functionality) of this sort - say it has to capture 1000 data sets (5 elements each) and be able to send SMSes to each based on a simple filter. The product should be complete in itself and should not require an additional db.

Thanks,
Mark
 
Where/how do you capture this data? from a file or? csv? excel? etc
 
The data would be entered into a db (manual entry) periodically by the user. I have in mind a simple interface allows you to enter a data set while displaying at least two elements of all data sets already in the database. The back-end db can be anything as long as it has sufficient scalability and would work when hosted online as well.
 
so from my understand, you want to enter user data and send that to a database, then you also want to view some data, maybe in a datagrid, in your application as well?
 
this can easily be done in c#, i don't know how to do the sms part though, you have to set that up with a service provider, too much effort so i didnt bother with that part.

so you open a connection to the database, then create some variables to store your user input to each variable with readline commands. then sqlcommand = insert the variables into the table where variable 1 = column 1, variable 2 = column 2 etc.
so now your data is stored in the db.

then create an instance of a data table, and an sql adapter. then pipe you info to the data table in your gui.
I usually use the odbc adapter for this.
this is very rough psuedo code hey.
 
Thanks! I was more concerned about the entire package, though. Assume that I have got the service provider approval, etc. How long would it take to code the entire product and what platform should one use?
 
Basically any language will do something this generic quite easily.
But .net is more perfect than the other because of the brilliant data binding and data handling in general.
If you wanted it as a website you could use ASP.NET or Silverlight. The beauty of using SL would be that you could make it outofbrowser so you can run it in the browser, plus install it as a desktop app.

From there, you could use MySQL(most hosts have this free) and instead of ODBC, use Linq(entities).

For the actual smsing use bulksms.co.za. They are the cheapest I have seen, plus I've used them multiple times with no problems. Their API is good too.

with the information you have given I would say that it will take around 48 hours for a descent coder. That being said, the filters could slow it up abit if you want them to be more complex than you have said.

I would say you are looking for:
.net coder in either ASP.net with experience in linq, mvvm, and wcf(in the case of sl)


P.s. This is written from my perspective as a .net coder.
 
Last edited:
roguemat said:
Basically any language will do something this generic quite easily.
But .net is more perfect than the other because of the brilliant data binding and data handling in general.
If you wanted it as a website you could use ASP.NET or Silverlight. The beauty of using SL would be that you could make it outofbrowser so you can run it in the browser, plus install it as a desktop app.

From there, you could use MySQL(most hosts have this free) and instead of ODBC, use Linq(entities).

For the actual smsing use bulksms.co.za. They are the cheapest I have seen, plus I've used them multiple times with no problems. Their API is good too.

with the information you have given I would say that it will take around 48 hours for a descent coder. That being said, the filters could slow it up abit if you want them to be more complex than you have said.

I would say you are looking for:
.net coder in either ASP.net with experience in linq, mvvm, and wcf(in the case of sl)


P.s. This is written from my perspective as a .net coder.
Click to expand...

true, i totally agree.
I use the odbc adapter to treat csv and excel files as a table though, i assume the same logic can be used for the table in the database.
 
Platform doesn't matter. You can do this with PHP on linux hosting with a MySQL database. You can do this with ASP.Net with Windows Hosting with a Sql Server database.

I'd go with windows / ASP.Net / Sql Server, purely because that's what i'm competent in (and the more I learn about PHP / Apache / Linux, the more I dislike it, but that's a different story). Either way this is a very simple task to do. With the low numbers of data you are talking about, you do not have to worry about scalability of the db.

Your requirements seem very simple, and if they are clearly defined, this should not take a lot of time (few days at most including meeting time, and changes). You could put together a prototype in one evening.

The only thing to consider, is that if you want to schedule SMSing people at certain times, you would need to initiate a call to the website periodically, as PHP / ASP.Net cannot run unless being called to service a request. This would require a piece of software (or you could use a service if running in windows) that would need to be online all the time to ping the software. Again, very simple to set up. To be reliable, you might want to run this from more than one location. If you were not using shared hosting, you could just use a service installed on the machine doing the hosting if in a windows environment. Most windows hosting providers (perhaps all) won't allow this in a shared hosting environment, so in that case, you could do it from a home PC if it's always on.
 
bekdik said:
You could probably do this with MS Access
Click to expand...

Mods... quick.... delete this guys post before someone takes him seriously!




/jk... but yeah, friends don't let friends use MS Access.
 
Generally with the lovely APIs available and interoperability in mind it would be best to code a system that isn't (entirely) vendor specific in terms of the SMS fuctionality. Most vendors support standard protocols or easy-to-use protocols like XML/SOAP and/or FTP to accept messages to be delivered. Using these APIs you'd cut the application complexity down somewhat and allow you to work on the platform and language you prefer

Take a look over at http://www.clickatell.co.za/application_development/soap_api.php for some examples
 
It depends on allot of factors that will pop-up during design but you can do this in Visual Studio quickly if you use the entity framework and data driven design.

If you do it custom code it will take allot longer but you have complete control.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X