Hi all, I will outline the project I have and the resources and skills that I have and hope that you all can give me some recommendations on the best way to accomplish it.

I am going to be doing a full redesign of a terribly old site done in Frontpage with an old cranky asp database. The new site will be done with fully compliant xhtml & css.

The old asp database which is basically a member list, needs to be redone for the new site .. tons of options as to how to do this I know (believe me I know) yet I cannot decide which is the best choice for me.

Here is what I have to work with. They have specialized software that will export fully customizable reports to a variety of formats including xml. I hope to work with xml due to its flexible and open nature. I know how to create simple xml, xsl to deliver information to xhtml pages but I really need to be able to have a member listing and search that can display the data by name or category at the very least.

From what I gather from what I have read, this is basically parsing the xml via a php form to deliver an on the fly php page which delivers the results.

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Edit:

I have just read the following:
On the minus side, it (xml) lacks many of the things found in real databases: efficient storage, indexes, security, transactions and data integrity, multi-user access, triggers, queries across multiple documents, and so on.

So it now looks like while I might still export the data to xml, I should still convert it into a proper database format such as MySQL. This only answers one of many questions, I still need some expert guidance as to how best to achieve my final results.

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Now I am not a programmer and have limited abilities in this area. I hand code all of my html and css and can also hand code the xml and simple xsl but when I face hand coding php or javascript from scratch by hand, my brain shuts off. I know I can purchase application development software but most are too expensive and I still have no idea if that is the right way to go. There are sometimes wayyyyyyyy to many choices out there.

I want to make the right choice not only for myself sanity wise but for the client's pocketbook. They are a non-profit and most of what we are doing is in trade or donated.

I would greatly appreciate any advice you can give me.

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