VWD Express project feasability

Hi all, I've been asked to put together a site for our companies intranet that staff can use to book annual leave/holidays. I was thinking about putting this together with VWD express, but having never used it before I'd like to know how possible/easy the follwing will be, and any specific pointers or pitfalls:

User authentication through windows/AD. I'd like the website to pick up the current windows username and use it to control the roles for the website. Entry should be denied to users not logged onto the domain. I've seen the windows authentication option but will this have the functionality I require? I will need 3 roles - Staff, Management and Administrators. There should be a correlation between windows userid and First/Last name. The staff should be assigned to a manager.Users should be able to select start and end dates for thier holiday and be able to add any specific notes if desired. The information should be put into a SQL server (already running SQL2000 SP4) and the table should contain the information plus flags for Authorised, Cancelled and Printed.The system should then email the manager, informing them that they have leave to approve (this is one place I would have no idea where to start). The manager can login to the site and view a list of leave requested by staff that they manage and be able to mark them as authorised.Administrators/HR should be able to login and view all leave requested in tabular form with filters and sorting options, so they can print everything off and mark it as printed.

I've seen the calendars avaliable in VWD and these would be ideal but have no idea how to use the information selected to post the information into the table.

Can the tabular views substitute information from other tables? For example i was thinking about a header table containing dates, username and the 3 flags as well as a staff table containing the correlation between username, first name, last name and manager. However i'd want to display first name, last name, dates and the flags in a tabular view.

The only programming experience i've had is Java, which doesnt help much but I think I can figure out minor C# code bits if necessary.

Thanks for any pointers!

VWD does not do these things for you. It allows you to do these things. It's a development environment, but you still need to do the work. All of these functions are fully possible, but as a rank beginner, be aware that it will take you quite a while to grasp the technology, let alone create anything useful. Choosing VWD will allow you to accomplish many tasks quicker, but that's it.

I'd suggest looking for a canned product first, before you take this on as your first .NET project.

Jeff

I wasnt expecting or hoping it would do it for me, I was just wondering if it would be possible with that package or whether i should look elsewhere such as Ultradev.

I'm fairly confident I can get the actual posting/retrieval and sorting of data working as i want it, my concerns were with the windows authentication and the email aspect. Are there any paticular pointers for these or generally a good learning resource?

Ultradev is a development environment as well. They're not code generators. They cut your work, but you will still need to write some code yourself.. When you gtet to the point where you're working on the authentication and email, post specific questions.

Jeff

I used ultradev for my last project back in the original asp days, although there was no logic , just simple data access.

One relatively specific question - where might i find instructions on posting data into a data source from something other than a formview? I can find plenty of tutorials on using a formview, which is pretty simple, but I want to be able to use a calendar and the formview doesnt seem suitable for this.

email looks pretty simple - using the smtpmail object. authentication i think i can just about manage, but one other specific question, do users have to be referenced by [domain]\user or just user?

Cheers

I'm not sure what formview is - maybe a windows form - which is not used in a web app
in a web app you would have the main page ( a webform ) and on that page you can have numerous controls - one of which could be a calendar - others could be textboxes, labels, dropdowns, etc...)

with VWD you woulddrag these items from the toolbox onto a webform - You would then write code to wire-up events that occur on the page - such as a button click - or calendar.selectdate, etc...

I think you could do what you want rather easy - as long as you keep it simple