Let's make a low-cost data entry platform with three commands.

1. Provision a VM and install SQL Server.
   • If your target is in Azure, there is a terraform script and instructions in the folder .\terraform that will deploy a SQL Express VM on a 2 core server (size B2ms) with a public IP. Alternatively, deploy without the public IP and join the VM to your network.
2. Upload CSV files to define and populate the data to be entered.
   • Copy and paste one or more csv file to the server in one directory.
3. Run the setup script
   • Copy and paste a script into PowerShell.
   • Provide the directory of the CSV files and the name of your webapp.
4. Review your work
   • The script will open your new webapp when it is done and you can take a look at what you have wrought.

Description

Low-cost data entry platform.

• You want to let end users put data into a database with a webapp and you want to do it with the a minimal amount of work - it isn't supposed to be pretty, it isn't supposed to be high-performance, it isn't supposed to be cutting edge.
• You want the code to be something you can check into source control and regenerate as needed.

Technical

• We will be using dotnet 5.0 and dotnetcore razor pages to scaffold and create Create-Read-Update-Delete (CRUD) webapp pages for all the tables you define through providing csv files.
• We will use SQL Server Express by default, but you could adapt this to use full versions of SQL Server if appropriate.
• We will use the dbatools PowerShell module for interacting with SQL Server.
• We will host the web app on IIS.