Access Or Excell for this job?

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I have a friend that has a part shop for atv's dirtbikes and dune buggies. I need to make a data base of sorts for their chinse and name parts. What I like to do for the proudct if it is needed Is to actually have the part order number from the parts place plus the number that comes on the part itself. These do not always coinside with each other. Will have to put the name of the part and what the part will fit with dates. Ok I think that is about it if you need any more information just let me know. Oh and I was thinking access would fit what I need but what do you guys think?

 

Well I'm not really a M$ office guy, but I think most people use Access now as a sort of Oracle Forms. They knock up the UI in Access and use SQL Server for the backend. Theres now six versions of SQL Server.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/editions/default.mspx

Theres loads of 4GL environments around alot of them are very reasonably priced.

Powerbuilder and 4th Dimension also seem to be popular.

Theres more open source databases than you can shake a stick at also.

You could do it in Excell also, it really depends what you want, the whole of office can be extended almost limitlessly, you can write a DB in Excell or a spreadsheet in Access, its just you'd be a little nuts if you did ! ;)

 

It has been about 5 years since I have really messed with office. One thing I do remember is that I didn't use the templates to often. Would rather do it myself. However, they do have the new office 2007 so I may have a look at them. I have 2003 at home, so this is a big jump for me, about passed out when I open it up saw the differnce and am trying to find some how tos at the moment because the menu bars aren't even the same. I still have not found the dam help button!

 

Thank you marsh for the link. I'm not much for opensource. I think I will stick with my beloved office. Will just have to get use to working with it again.

 

another vote for access, I'm not a big fan of excel for this sort of thing

 

It all depends on how big the database is.

I agree to avoid Excel - it's a toy. A nice toy - but still a toy.

Access *may* be OK. The main prob is the size of the data. Over a 'certain' amount (which is somewhat variable) it can't really hack it. This is where you need MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQL Server.

Harry.

 

There are some pretty nice open source resources available.

I don't know how easy this is to get working on Windows, but I've set it for a business on Linux and it's pretty decent. You can run some pretty large businesses off this web application. It's double entry bookkeeping, inventory, pos invoices, the ability to email out quotations on bids to customers, purchase orders to vendors, etc... along with full charge bookkeeping for everything except for payroll, and that's because local payroll taxes and rules vary so much per locale so it's basically impossible to implement in something like this.

It can be set up to run over SSL and require passwords so it's possible to log in securely over the internet too.

 

Right now access will do nicely. I would call it a mom and pop shop but they do a pretty good bussiness. However, they don't have the room for tons and tons of stock, but just enough room that there is no way to remember all of it. Specially parts that aren't used all the time.

 

Mitz,

Have you done database design before? If you haven't, a really good book for a beginner that teaches proper design principles without getting into all confusing academic jargon is "Database Design for Mere Mortals" by Michael Hernandez.

If you follow his advice and instruction you will end up with a normalized database, but without having to understand all that technical jargon. He gives step-by-step instructions on how to look at the problem, the types of questions to ask the people who will be using the database, how to come up with the tables you need, the appropriate columns in each table, and how to tie it all together. It is very good. It's the one book on database design that I have read that really makes sense to me, as I don't have all the mathematical background to understand all the mathematical rational behind normalization and the like. But, after reading this book I realize that he explained how things like normalization work, he just did it without using the scary terminology.

He's very good at what he does, and he writes very clearly. You don't have to be a mathematician to design a good database, but you do have to follow the correct principles.

 

I agree with Ken but if it were me I would use Oracle (with SQL) from the start so there would be no need to migrate the Access stuff later on, but thats just my opinion.

 

Oracle? For a mom-and-pop shop?

You've never priced it before, have you?

 

No I havent.

I just thought it may be wise in case of expansion then they would already have a substantial db package to accommodate more records they will probably need.

 

Oh, that is not going to happen green. There are just 2 of them there. My bestfriend is sick though and they have been going back and forth to the drs, and larry is the one that beens working on the units. So if he is behind the counter he is like what the hell is this for? Well hell if I know. He knows more then I do. But ricky is the one that has been doing this for 30 yrs and can look at a part and tell which unit it will work with or interchange with and the years that it will fit. Which is what causes the prombles. All that knowledge is locked in rickys head not on the part items themselves. So we have no idea if we have something in stock or not. Chinse parts are not in the reg order books. So I have decide to organzie them. If for nothing more then poor larrys sanity.

I fig if I do 2 db, one for named parts and one for chinse parts and get ricky to unlock that door to all his information it will be more then enough to handle what they have in there.

 

Thanks freddy! I have done it before, but only several of them and it has been a few years ago. I still have my shelly cashman series and special edition office books (love these books) but they are for 2000, don't think they are going to help me with 2007 hmmm, think I will go vist amazon. ohhhh new books here I come

 

I'm sure the 2007 db will suffice for now, and if need be just upsize it to sql server and update the application automatically(never had to try this so not sure of the reliability)

 

To use Oracle or Oracle Forms for this would be complete overkill, not to mention a lot of expense (unless the free "Personal Oracle" or whatever it is would do the job but I dont know much about this - havent done Oracle for years)

If you wanted to use a "big" RDBMS then I would go with the free express edition of SQL Server 2005. But then you have to develop a front end in VB/VB.Net etc, or you could use Access Forms as a front end for it.

Personally I would say to use Access for the db and front end and see how you get on. You will still have the forms if you migrate to SQL Server/Oracle later

 

Yeah, I just visited the bookstore (Amazon.com) a couple of times in the last month myself. I picked up the following:

The Perl CD Bookshelf (6 Perl books on a cd)
Core Python Programming
Python Cookbook
Programming Python
The Practice of System and Network Administration
The Exim SMTP Mail Server
The TCP/IP Guide
Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science

As you can see, I have my next year or so of reading and learning pretty well mapped out for me. Well, on top of that I'll be learning Zope/Plone too. That's one of the reasons for all the Python books as Zope is built on Python. Also, I figure that NASA, Google, and Industrial Light and Magic(They do a lot of the special effects you see in the movies) must have some clue as to Python's value as a programming language as they all use Python pretty heavily, so I'm going to use it as my tool for learning how to program.

Also, what I'm doing at work requires a lot of automation and string handling, so Python is an excellent fit there, and if I need to build some type of gui for some of the tools I need to build I can do that with Python too.

 

Well access would be fine then, I just thought if it was going to expand then a larger type of db program would be good to have