I got a bunch of files. And I have studied them to learn the pattern of how the web pages are laid out. Now I need to go through the HTML, line by line, and grab the raw data. Luckily each page seems to fit a pretty well defined pattern. I just need to teach my Java code to read for the data like my own eyes can now.
Heck. Maybe I will even write the new implementation using Java. The original product was written in PHP. I suspect they have a MySQL backend database. For my first try, I plan to grab the data and stick it in an Oracle database. However it could just as easily work with a MySQL database.
The only question is that once I have an optimized replacement system, what language will I use to serve up the data? PHP? Java? Or maybe something else. For now Java seems best. I actually don't know PHP. So that is a main consideration.
