Creating a site to query a database of tables

Question

I have a small problem. I am working with some manual testers who are untrained in programming/database design. Our current process means that these manual testers need to i

Answer 1

I think this could be done in the following steps without any PHP programming and even without need in any web-server.

1. Write SQL-script which makes everything to retrieve data you need.

2. Modify script to add columns to result set with simple html-formatting to make you result record like the following:

   '', 'resultcolumn1', '', 'resultcolumn2',''
   

3. Run this script using sqlcmd with output option to file. Give resulting file .html extension.
4. Place sqlcmd call inside cmd file. After calling sqlcmd call web browser with resulting html file name as parameter. This will display your results to tester.

So, your testers only run cmd file with some parameters and get html page with results. Of course you need to form correct html head and body tags, but this is not a problem.

Now about your main question about how you can be sure the columns returned are the most suitable. I think the most reliable from the most simple ways is to create thesaurus table which contains synonyms for your column names. (This could be done by testers themselves). So you can search your column names from Information Schema View using LIKE in INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS as well as in thesaurus table.