Deciding on development tools

[EagleTempest]

Sorry for posting there here. I wasn't quite sure where to post it.

We have SQL 2005 containing project and client info. We want to merge, server-side, this info into various MS Word templates such as transmitals. Ideally a web based application would be great as we have many office across the country and can not count on every computer having all the service packs, etc, installed.

I've been researching VB .NET 2005, ASP.NET, and VS Tools for Office 2005. I realize VB has Windows forms and Web forms. This is where my confusion begins.

Do I need VS 2005 or can I live with VB .NET 2005?

We dug up a copy of VB .Net 2003 that we found during a move. Is 2005 much better?

Thanks for your help.

 

[jshurst]

IMO, yes, 2005 is much better. However, you don't need to pay for it. You said that you already have VB.NET, but if you want to create web projects then you'll want to download Visual Web Developer (free too). If you find that you can't create something that you need (like Windows Services) then you'll need to step up to Visual Studio 2005 Professional (I would skip Standard).

Basically all the components in the Standard version are split into free separate components, which you can download from Microsoft.

I'd looked into doing something like what you were talking about as well. They have an SDK for that, but what might be easier is to create the document, then save is as MS-xml. Then in vb.net read the xml file and loop through finding certain key words (like for a first name field, you could put FirstName in you Word doc) then replace it with a field from the database.

May not be the most elegant solution, but it should work. Hopefully all of that made sense ;-)