Looking for the right software 1

[elwood00]

I am familiar with SQL and relational databases, but my knowledge on current developments is outdated.

I am faced with the following scenario:
I have a database with about 1500 records, which represent site locations. I have about 8-12 guys on the road inspecting the sites (each guy has his sites) - they have to fill out an inspection report. They hit between 5-15 sites per day - the reports should be transmitted to the central database on a daily basis. I think I could handle the task using MS Access, but I am afraid to have an access license on every notebook in the field might be a little cost prohibitive.

Are there alternate products out there that can handle the task and that dont force me to start completely from scratch like a MySQL/PHP approach would? Or is there something like a runtime module for Access tables and forms? I am a bit in a time crunch, since the guy in charge of the project left without notice and without usable results.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

 

[elwood00]

PS: They also take about 10 digital photographs per site. If the program can handle jpgs, it would be even better.

 

[philcon]

Hey elwood,

I'm not sure how friendl or stable it is but the developer version of office, allows you to bundle dbs you create with the runtime components of access.

You may find peoples' experience of the runtime highlighted in questions on this site.

Regards


Phil.

 

[ZmrAbdulla]

Understanding the Microsoft Access Runtime Engine

Zameer Abdulla
_{Jack of Visual Basic Programming, Master in Dining & Sleeping}
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[elwood00]

Thanks guys - I am looking into that option a little more ATM - knowing a little bit of Access and knowing a little more about Microsoft and the 'intuitive nature' of their approaches - I am somewhat afraid I might get in over my head there - error handling routines and things like that sound very time consuming.

Still waiting for some response from that end - I am kinda leaning towards Filemaker Pro - granted it cannot do what Access can, but my task at hand is fairly basic from a database point of view and it might be able to handle it - one thing is for sure - the learning curve is alot shorter - and I can get my hands on OEM versions for around a $100 a pop - any experiences with Filemaker?

 

[cghoga]

Runtime dBASE is very cheap to distribute, but so is Access if you have Developer's Edition.

Filemaker (at least 5-6 yrs back that's when I used it last) will do the task, but it is not as powerful as Access. Filemaker is easier to learn and code in though.

The best approach might be to develop a dynamic web form so that the data remains centralized. With the small amount of records and what you need it to do Access or Filemaker could serve as your back end with a little HTML/ASP thrown in the mix.

hope this helps.

 

[cghoga]

This option might be the cheapest option and take the least amount of time to set up. And you don't have to worry about licensing (unless basic Office isn't installed).

Create a template in Excel with fields for your road guys to fill in straight across.

Like...

Field1 | Field2 | Field3 | etc

A format like this would be easily importble into Access
once your road guys return to the office.

As far as transmitting, if the road guys could not come in regularly, then they could email the spreadsheets to a central location, then an employee internally could load the data into the database.

Note, this could eventually all be automated, but since you are in a bind this may be the best short term solution.

Hope this helps.

 

[Tranman]

elwood00,
Just a word of caution...If you are planning on keeping a photo archive, DO NOT load the images into Access.

I'm working on a consulting gig right now for a customer who loaded about 1600 images into an Access database, and the database hit the 2 GB limit, and died.

They had not saved the images as stand-alone jpg's, which meant that I had to write a program to strip the jpg's out of the ole objects in the database. Neither pretty, nor cheap for them.

What I ended up doing is just loading all of the extracted jpg files into a folder on their server and delivering them up from there into their forms and reports as needed.

It sounds to me like you could just have your inspectors email you text files and the associated images, and you can easily load the text files into your database with the Text File ODBC driver. The pictures could live on your hard drive. All you really need is a naming scheme to keep the pictures associated with the data.

Good Luck,
Tranman

 

[elwood00]

thanks so far guys - i am getting some useful hints here. One thing I have to keep in mind... any approach that requires an independent thought process on the field guys is a wrong approach, so their end needs to be pretty much fool proof. They never visit the office, so emailing is essential.

I always had a weird feeling about how Access handles images - speaking of making stuff more complicated than necessary.

dBase - wow...i had no idea those guys were still around - I used to do Clipper stuff in College - maybe I should check into that.

So far - thanks to everybody - and keep the good stuff coming

 

[willir]

As per the Jpeg images...
You can use a hyperlink field within the database, for the current visit, to link to the appropriate image.

Also, are the guys on the road, and communicating remotely? If so, then Access replication may work -- but has some administrative overhead. If not, not an issue.

Another option - the site visit info is captured in a spreadsheet, and the data imported in the Access database.

Lastly, MySQL.

 

[cghoga]

Yes, dBASE is still around, I think more prevalent in Europe maybe? The Microsoft machine has basically given the perception that nothing else will do when that's simply not the case in a lot of situations.

As for the images, store them in a centralized location on your network.
Within a table in your database create a field called imgfilepath to store the image filepath locations.
Then, if you want to display an image for the related record, put an image object on your form/report and set its Picture property to the value of imgfilepath.

hope this helps.