Re: OT: Database application

On Sun, 2 Dec 2007 12:35:41 -0800, "Tom Gardner"
<tom(nospam)@ohiobrush.com> wrote:
<snip>
The software available is expensive and complicated and way
over-kill for what we need to do. I'd like to automate some of the
spreadsheets and/or have some simple database applications...you know, the
kind I used to bang out in dBaseIII, FoxBASE, early FoxPro or some of the
other DOS based database managers.
<snip>
===================
After reading the replies/responses/commentary for a while I have
a few reminders/observations, and suggestions for a "cheap screw"
solution. [my favorite kind of solution!]

From the perspective of the cost to replace/create, the ratio of
costs run something like this:

Hardware = 1X, for example, run down to WalMart or BestBuy with
500$ and replace within an hour

Software including customization/macros = 10X or 5000$ in this
example, the direct out of the box cost may not be much more, but
the time/effort will be several days to several weeks.

data including time/cost to input = 100X or more or 50,000$ in
this example

The loss of hardware or software, while inconvenient, seldom puts
a company out of business, ==>but the loss of their data files
may well do so.<== The moral is to make backups AND STORE THESE
OFFSITE, POSSIBLY AT HOME.

While somewhat inefficient, flat ASCII files are the most
portable between applications, allowing easy upgrades in your
data entry, data query, and analysis software.

IMNSHO you are attempting to get a single program to do
everything.

As in the machine shop as well as life, a program that does
everything does nothing very well, is expensive, and hard to deal
with.

ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] a superset of the MRP/MRPII
[Materials Resources Planning/Manufacturing Resources Planning]
programs such as SAP are examples.
click on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Material_requirements_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_resource_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_ERP
http://www.sap.com/solutions/business-suite/erp/index.epx

Given your stated requirements:
"I want a simple application to log incoming shipments. I built
a database in Access with fields including: Date, supplier, PO#,
product, qty, text notes and a few more."

Step #1.
I suggest a simple PowerBasic text based *ENTRY* program, which
can including simple range checking. If you want to get fancy,
there are bar code scanners, from wands to guns, that can go in
parallel with the keyboard for data entry. You can also include
head-down two pass entry for checking/verification.

Text based is much faster for data entry than GUI. More than
likely this should go to a "holding file" rather than the main
data file. Note that PowerBasic CC [Console Compiler] runs
directly under windows and not in a dos box, although it has the
look/feel (and speed) of a traditional dos program.

If you will send me your data description, I will hack out a
PowerBasic demo. Use the email address shown.

Step #2.
Create a simple PowerBasic program to range check and merge the
above "holding file" by a qualified person into the main data
file. This will allow several people to input data on separate
computers. Note that you can easily import flat comma delimited
ASCII files into Excel or the OpenOffice equivalent [free]
spreadsheets. There is however a limit of 256 columns and 65,536
rows.

Step #3.
Import the comma delimited [csv] files into Excel or OpenOffice,
sort as desired, and generate tons of reports, charts, graphs.
This process can be easily automated using macros. The
spreadsheets offer a large number of report generation tools
including subtotals by variable, pivot tables, and many types of
charts.

Unless you are running General Motors, 65k line items of shipment
data will be sufficient, especially if you offload the older
data, for example to a cd for archive.


.

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