connect a microcontroller to the database via an IP network

Hello everyone,

I can be categorized as newbie in microcontroller development. I am currently doing some research regarding my final year project. The project title is "cutom attendance monitoring hardware". The goal of the project is to produce an access control box that will monitor the student ID cards and report the student attendance via a wired IP network. The intended design is to use a Mifare RFID card reader as the input. It is then connected to the RCM3200 RabbitCore that has ethernet interface and TCP/IP stack. It also has a small LCD display for feedback.

And my real question is, is there anyway to make the microcontroller directly interact with the students' database through the IP network? To make things clear, the database is stored somewhere else but still within the local IP network. My idea is, as the input from the reader comes in, the microcontroller will query to the database (could be mySQL or anything) to verify whether this particular student is really on the expected guest list for a certain lecture. After it is verified, the micrcontroller will report the attendance accross the same IP network by updating the attendance's database.

I would be happy if anybody can help me with this problem. Thank you so much!

regards,
capsuleiz

I'd suggest you create a small server program that takes simplified requests from the access control box and turns them into database queries. This way, you can support multiple access control boxes and it is easier to move to a different database.

Thank you philba for the great idea.

From your suggestion, I understand that the small server program helps in interpreting the simplified requests as they reach the server from the access control box i.e it is basically a computer/server program (correct me if I am wrong). Alternatively, my idea is to make the control box talks to the database directly without any program that link the two. Can the microcontroller be programmed to do that?

You'd need a pretty good understanding of all the protocols involved but there's no reason why not.