Easiest way to store data on server that was collected in an applet?

[lazyjay]

Dear all, I am quite a n00b at Java applets and I was hoping for your advice at the very early stage of a project:
I plan to conduct an interactive survey with the help of an Java applet. Each participant will need to make several decisions based on what the applet displays. These decisions do then need to be stored on the server for later analysis (we are talking really low data volume, maybe 200 participants in total with maybe 50 decisions each)

Now, my question: in your opinioin, what is the easiest way to do this? I already researched some possiblities (RMI, mysql, direct socket) and was under the impression, that maybe mysql would be the easiest for me to figure out... would you agree?

Also, I had planned to realize this over a paid web hoster, such as Web Hosting | URLhost - would that work or is that totally naive of me to think they would let me place applets on their sites that can communicate with mysql on their servers?

Thanks a lot in advance!
Johann

[doWhile]

It all depends upon what sort of data there is, what you wish to do with the data, how you define easiest, what you have at your disposal, and how familiar you are with the techniques. For me, sql would be the way to go. For you, if you have no experience with sql it will require leaning the language and JDBC and/or J2EE

[lazyjay]

Dear doWhile,

thank you very much for your reply so far.

As you pointed out, I will need to familiarize myself with SQL (or, if I understand it correctly, PHP CGI would be the alternernative, right?). So my question to you would be: given that I have 0 knowledge about SQL and 0 knowledge about CGI - which of the two will I be able to get to work quicker in it's most basic version?

I think that at a max. 10 people per day would use this applet (for 15 minutes). At the end, the collected data should be stored to the server. This "collected data" will probably consist out of maybe 10 strings plus 30 integer values. So either, I let the applet write to an sql database or I will need CGI to generate one file (or one file per user) where all the data gets stored. After 1 month or so I want to download the complete data in bulk and analyse it on my local PC.
So again: should I try to teach myself mySQL/JDBC or rather CGI? (or some other method I haven't mentioned?)

Thanks alot!

[Norm]

It could depend on what the hosting server allows you do to also.

[lazyjay]

Thank you for your comment, Norm!
Yes, I get that I need to be careful with webhost selection. Right now though, I am totally free in my choices. I certainly wouldn't mind spending some bucks on some decent webspace that has JDBC for mySQL already set up for example IF you tell me that the sql learning is easier than the CGI learning.

I would also gladly take recommendations for a suitable webhost if you should have any. Top priority would be easiness to set-up (and of course the price shouldn't be exorbitant in relation to the simplicity of my task)

[Norm]

I can't compare them as I have never learned SQL. I've used cgi with perl and PHP for very simple applications.
They are both syntactically programming languages that would look familiar to you. Get a good reference book or find the PHP website and you could be programming in a few days, depending on your programming skills.