Customer records manager

[storme]

G'day all

This little project has been running around in my head for some time.

I run a small (My wife and I) on-site computer repair business.

I do all the on-site stuff and she takes all the bookings from home.

We have about 1000+ customers on system cards many of which through one thing or another we probably won't see again.

BUT we need to keep records of them.

Well I need a system that I can use on-site (probably NO internet access) and my wife can use at home to look up customers details.

I've got an old EEEPC (have to load XP on it), nice and small so won't get in her way (AND she might use it) to run at home.

On-site I have a 13" screen laptop.

The system I was thinking of was SQL (MS or MYSQL) for the main database at home and SQLite for my laptop when I'm away from the main network.

At the end of each day I'll have to work out some way of syncing them.

ANY COMMENTS on that strategy?

I’m writing my own front end for the database and designing the database.

The GUI is one of my worries as I HATE doing GUIs. I’m using Koda so that helps.

Has anyone created a GUI creator for SQL connected forms? (just a stab in the dark)

OH and a question I should have asked at the top.

Has anyone created a Customer records manager in AutoIT and will willing to share?

I’d be nice to start with some working (or partly working) code instead of reinventing the wheel.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[jchd]

I only have dumb questions at this point: do you have good enough reasons to use a custom GUI front-end to SQLite for this? Isn't it the case that you could just use a good SQLite manager, possibly with a few views for both home and field-based uses?

I use SQLite Expert for creation, maintainance, rework of much larger (from 10 to 900Mb) SQLite DBs and this works like a charm without extra code in many cases.

I'd use solid constraint validation, plus eventually LUA or Pascal scripts (Pro version only) to perfom actions that need a bit more than SQL can provide.

Also don't forget you may define views so that they are not read-only!

If you put a timestamp in each row and update it at every insert, update and eventually a logical delete column, you can synchronize things easily. Given the small table size and probable low complexity, that may be a very workable solution.

Anyway, give SQLite Expert a try and, at least you can model your tables and see how you can work them out. You can do this with the free version, which never expires and doesn't nag endlessly.

[storme]

I only have dumb questions at this point: do you have good enough reasons to use a custom GUI front-end to SQLite for this? Isn't it the case that you could just use a good SQLite manager, possibly with a few views for both home and field-based uses?

Short answer "the wife".

She would freak if she had to use a dev tool to access the database.

I use SQLite Expert for creation, maintainance, rework of much larger (from 10 to 900Mb) SQLite DBs and this works like a charm without extra code in many cases.

Sounds interesting. I'll have a look. Will be useful to get the database whipped into shape at least.

I'd use solid constraint validation, plus eventually LUA or Pascal scripts (Pro version only) to perfom actions that need a bit more than SQL can provide.

OK

Also don't forget you may define views so that they are not read-only!

If you put a timestamp in each row and update it at every insert, update and eventually a logical delete column, you can synchronize things easily. Given the small table size and probable low complexity, that may be a very workable solution.

I was thinking along similar lines. Yes a few quick Queries is all that would be required.

Anyway, give SQLite Expert a try and, at least you can model your tables and see how you can work them out. You can do this with the free version, which never expires and doesn't nag endlessly.

Thank you. I'll have a look!

[jchd]

I happen to know both SQLite and Expert fairly well and if you need you can PM so I can offer more precise help (if you want it).