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brian.pallas

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Dec 19, 2011
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Whitehall, MI
Is anyone using a database software? If you are what are you using and what do you like or dislike about it?

I am looking to have tooling components (toolholders, screws, seats, shims, clamps, etc.), job box contents and machine info in a database.
 
Is anyone using a database software? If you are what are you using and what do you like or dislike about it?

I am looking to have tooling components (toolholders, screws, seats, shims, clamps, etc.), job box contents and machine info in a database.

most start with microsoft excel and some use microsoft Access parts of microsoft office. there are free similar versions like Libreoffice
.
excel works for most things unless you got more than many 100,000's of items
 
Is anyone using a database software? If you are what are you using and what do you like or dislike about it?

I am looking to have tooling components (toolholders, screws, seats, shims, clamps, etc.), job box contents and machine info in a database.

this is a very vague requirement. If you want a custom solution, what you need to do is define what of attributes do you want to have for each item stored, then what type of reports and searches you need for your workflows. And it can get a lot more complex from there. A database by itself is just a tool, what you need is a solution. Is it just inventory management or you want a full erp? Start with describing what you want to automate. I bet there is a solution for it already,


dee
;-D
 
Not a full erp for sure. Access would do everything I need it to do.

Are people happy with Access, or is there a better option? Anyone have experience with any of the open source Access type databases? Do they work just as well?
 
Access gets a bad rap from a lot of IT guys who are used to much bigger, more robust and capable enterprise level database engines, but for the average Joe
Access ( or some of it's open source alternatives ) are quite powerful.
But as Dee said, out of the gate they are just an "engine" that needs to be "installed" into a vehicle to make use of it.

I've started with Paradox way way back, writing complete applications in PAL, later switched to MS Access and been using it ever since.
Though I have only touched it to add a few new query-s here and there or corrected a few report layouts, but my primary shop management I wrote
about 18 years ago and it works very well for what I want it to.

Back in the Borland-era, Paradox was the king of the small scale database management tools.
Looks like it's still around in the COREL professional suite, may want to try them as well.

Do note though that no matter what you get, you WILL have to write the application almost from scratch, so there is quite a bit of learning involved.
Not to use, but to create ant tailor the app. for your needs.
 
Access can get nasty, huge, and slow very quickly. There is also the issue if storing everything in one file, and potential corruption or data loss. No proper ERP uses Access anymore. JobBoss moved to Microsoft SQL a several ago and it made all the difference. No idea what scale you are planning for this, but you may future proof a bit with an SQL version. Whether that be Microsoft SQL, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or one of many others. As mentioned though, a database is just stored information, the vastly more important part is what you want to do with that information.

-Adam
 
Access can get nasty, huge, and slow very quickly. There is also the issue if storing everything in one file, and potential corruption or data loss.
-Adam

True, but how long would it take a machineshop to generate enough records to hit the limit where Access devours itself?
Yes, the single file system still doesn't sit well with me after all these years, but on the upside, if you want to protect yourself all you do is copy a single file
to your backup location daily and minimize the possibility of loosing valuable data.
 
True, but how long would it take a machineshop to generate enough records to hit the limit where Access devours itself?
Yes, the single file system still doesn't sit well with me after all these years, but on the upside, if you want to protect yourself all you do is copy a single file
to your backup location daily and minimize the possibility of loosing valuable data.

Yeah, i agree. I just remember in the bad old days of Access based JobBoss it turning into a steaming pile at least once a year, and needing to be cleaned up.

The single file issue is of particular concern for me due to the prevalence of ransomware viruses these days. Somebody opens the wrong email attachment, and all of the sudden your DB file and all it's backups on the network are encrypted forever. Of course Off-site is the way to go there, but even so you will never have a 100% current version to restore. With an active DB server this isn't really a concern and you can do real time replication.

I am surely over thinking this, but thats my take on Access being used in production.

-Adam
 
True, but how long would it take a machineshop to generate enough records to hit the limit where Access devours itself?
Yes, the single file system still doesn't sit well with me after all these years, but on the upside, if you want to protect yourself all you do is copy a single file
to your backup location daily and minimize the possibility of loosing valuable data.

PostgreSQL - dead easy to have a little script that does a dump to a file and write that file anywhere you want. One of my clients, I set it up so his backup goes to his iCloud account as well as a local file system.

Access is likely fine for a small single user system. I wouldn't use it myself but I like real SQL databases not little toy systems.

Doing all the data entry forms & reports is where the real work is - after you've figured out just what you want to store. Really, for a dumb system a spreadsheet has a lot going for it, at least initially.

PDW
 
It's funny Seymour we just transitioned from Paradox 3.5 I thought I'd never hear that name anywhere but the shop
 
At my last gig that I just left we'd been using an Access (2013) based ERP system with lots of custom code with virtually no problems; at least any you could attribute to Access itself. There were a few times when our programmer said "Access doesn't like to do that" but it had more to do with form behavior and things like that. I simply can't imagine it not working virtually flawlessly for a simple tooling database.

The Dude
 








 
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