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Thread: Database project

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    Database project

    Hi guys,

    Just about to embark on a small database project for my local community, but I'm after a few opinions on what is going to be the easiest way of doing it:

    Basically.. I need to record information of people who are going to attend some meetings. There is a major development due to happen and we are organising lots of events to gather local people's opinions. The idea is that by acurately consolidating what people think and where they live, we'll be able to present our objections in such a well-organised way that it will be more effective than just random people protesting etc.

    So there will be multiple people, multiple events and at each event we'll be asking multiple questions of people and recording all of the individual people's answers. As the project gains momentum we'll hope to be able to do things like "Find all the people who are 24-30, oppose the development and live in the post code 'ME2' and give me their address..."

    As far as I can tell I've got three options for this:

    1. MS Excel
    2. MS Access
    3. MySQL with some sort of web front end - presumably this option could either be an "online" or "offline" version.

    I don't have insane skills, but I have do have experience of all three - I might even use getafreelancer.com to hire some cheap labour to do the complicated bits of it - but I'm wondering what the easiest route is going to be. There's some obvious drawbacks and advantages, but if anyone else has opinions I'd be interested to discuss!

    Cheers,
    Rich
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    Re: Database project

    Excel probably will not be powerfull enough for what you need, especially if you are wanting to do some reporting at some stage. I would personally use MS Visual Web Developer Express with MS SQL Server Express. Which are both free. You would need an IIS server though to publish it. Alternatively you could do you own Visual Basic Express front end to a MS SQL Server Express backend, which could be standalone.

    MS Access would be good too, and probably the easiest way to set it up and create some good reports.

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    Re: Database project

    Access. Unless you need a web front-end, in which case MySQL, but it doesn't sound like you would need a web frontend. They are a pain in the ass to code the minute details for anyway.

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    Re: Database project

    Agree with Access, if you already have a copy. Much easier than trying to faff with Web front ends - forms designer and VB editor in Access are actually perfectly designed for this kind of thing.I know a lot of people get down on Access, but for small, simple data projects it's simply the best software out there...

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    Re: Database project

    Well it sounds like your collecting a large amount of data, the best way to approach this would be a combination of a web front end, recommend PHP for this, free, easy to pickup, and a mySQL database backend. You can then advertise the URL of the website and invite people to fill in the online form. This saves you a lot of manual labor doing this manually.

    In addition to this you can use either a xl spreadsheet or a access database to manually collect any other/additional info, and then import/merge this to the SQL database afterwords.

    Alternatively have you considered using an online survey site to collect the data? They generally have built in reporting tools that are pretty good. Some of the survey sites are free too, others have a minimal cost. I used one to collect info for my dissertation a couple years back. I can try and dig out the link if your intrested. HTH.
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    Re: Database project

    Definitely Access in my opinion. Get that pencil and paper out and start designing your database. It's much better and easier if you start on paper first instead of diving in straight settings up tables and stuff.

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    Re: Database project

    Access would be quite easy to do but if you need multiple users to be able to amend and view the data at any one time then MySQL would be best. The good thing about access is that it will export to a MySQL ODBC database.if you do ever need to do so.
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    Re: Database project

    Thanks guys - some useful points there.

    I'm feeling the love for MS Access front end for the reports with pretty bits handled by VB, and then using a MySQL backend.

    That would give the advantage of being able to have the MySQL database stored online, and then allowing multiple people to access the data using the Access front ends. I wouldn't need them to modify the data simultaneously, but accessing it for read-access would be kind of handy.

    I suppose the really crap opt-out possibiltiy, is just to use an off-the-shelf product like Quark FormArtist Presto - which would save a lot of development time. I'm happy to design the database, but I'd bet my bottom dollar on screwing up the tables at some point and it taking a while to sort out!
    Rich
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    Re: Database project

    I'm going to avoid my rant about MySQL, and how most people who advocate it haven't really used the alternatives.

    But first off this sounds like you need to ensure data proteciton, if your sharing accross multiple sites, with multiple users, you should make considerations for this concern from day 1. You will save an awful lot of hassel.

    Access is quite good in as much as you can use your front end on a lot of back ends, but MySQL dosen't really offer any unqiue advantage of many of the alternatives here.

    As for the whole "web app" thing, they are great in as much as you don't have to maintain any desktop software, but generally speaking my experiance have the lowest user satisifaction for use. Just watch someone who facebooks at work and see how much they moan about the UI clunkyness! The user experiance of web apps isn't really there yet, and if your able to take the hit of saying "all clients must run windows xp or later" or similar then a rich GUI application is often easier to design and quicker to implement than a web app. There are a multitude of technologies to let you do this, my favourate at this moment is WPF (part of .Net 3.5).

    The requirements for the back end don't sound remotely extereme, my first impression would be that its the security model to protect registrants details thats most trouble? Multiple people accessing a database is so damn easy!
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    Re: Database project

    Personally, I use Postgres for my database needs rather than MySQL, as it feels more finished to me. Some people feel MySQL's replication is a killer feature. The future for MySQL also is not that certain as Sun is its big supporter and I don't think Oracle will be too interested in supporting it. However many more jobs out there are asking for MySQL experience so it would be a useful thing to learn. I believe MySQL and Postgres are both available for windows so you do not need to have *nix box for your database. Use of these one of these would allow you to migrate onto many hosting services no matter what OS they use as a backed.
    Last edited by oolon; 26-07-2009 at 06:37 PM. Reason: Correcting one of many typos

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    Re: Database project

    TheAnimus, can you elaborate any further on the security model concerns that you have? Am I being naive to assume that password protecting databases is sufficient?

    The multiple sites and multiple users is of minor importance at the moment, and I'd rather tie down the exact architecture I'm going to use first.

    In my mind the benefits of using Access frontend and MySQL backend would be the amount of developer support already available to help me through problems I encounter - that and the fact I have already worked with both, so (in principal!) understand them both better than learning something new.

    I'm beginning to feel daunted by the project and feel like I might be reinventing the wheel slightly..
    Rich
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    Re: Database project

    I don't think you would need to use Access and MySQL. Access would be sufficient as both the front and back end. Also, can be used in a runtime environment once created, so you don't need full version of Access to use it.

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    Re: Database project

    Do you need multiple users accessing the database at the same time? If yes then you need something other than Access. If not then I would go for Access.
    Password protecting an Access database doesn't do much, other than ask for the password when you open the database. You would need to encrypt it as well. I'm not sure if the encryption uses the database password or the workgroup information. Your best bet is to ensure physical security of the device with the database on and use NTFS permissions to restrict access, the JET security model takes a little to learn and you can easily leave gaping holes in your security and not know it.

    Also, can be used in a runtime environment once created, so you don't need full version of Access to use it.
    Doesn't that require the Access development toolkit? Is that still a seperatly paid for item?

    If you reuqire multi user access to the database then I would personally would use MS SQL and VB .NET because that is what I am most comfortable with and they are free. Obviously pick whatever you are comfortable with. If you decide to go web based then it means you need to find somewhere to host it, unless you can host it yourself, this may start adding to costs.

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    Re: Database project

    Quote Originally Posted by pipTheGeek View Post
    Do you need multiple users accessing the database at the same time? If yes then you need something other than Access. If not then I would go for Access.
    Think it depends on the number of users accessing the DB at any one time to be honest. We use an Access DB at work, with only 3 people working on it. And we haven't had any conflicts at all.

    It's when you start to share the DB across to hundreds of people (think the maximum number is 250ish) that you start to have problems.

    Quote Originally Posted by pipTheGeek View Post
    Password protecting an Access database doesn't do much, other than ask for the password when you open the database. You would need to encrypt it as well. I'm not sure if the encryption uses the database password or the workgroup information.
    Agreed. I've been dying to implement ULS (User Level Security) for the one at work. There is an absolutely fantastic whitepaper that you have to read, covering workgroup files and ULS. Download it here.

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    Re: Database project

    Yup ULS was what i was referring too.

    I doubt you need any auditing features?
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    Re: Database project

    You can roll your own ULS with Access and write your own auditing (that was a really fun project ), but there's absolutely no need to be doing that sort of thing unless you *really* want to

    The big question here, I guess, is how many people *need* to access the data- you can't just collect it then publish it on a website, because there'd be all sorts of Data Protection issues there (you've mentioned collecting and reporting on people's names and addresses so that's sensitive personal information - be *very* careful how you handle it). Also make sure that, when the data is collected, you are very specific about how it's going to be handled and who will have access to it, then make sure that's exactly what happens to the data, or you open yourself up for legal action. Do you know enough about securing a web application to *guarantee* that the data can't be compromised? If not, then *please* don't put it in a web app! At least with a single file Access DB you have some idea of who has or hasn't been able to access the data...

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