Making Your Own Databases
 

I have that much info on Excel, its official: its not funny.

And I must say, I'm a bit of a deft hand at formulas and such. Pretty jolly clever at extracting info out of web page cut and pastes. After 10 years I'm pretty good in my own little world of excel. If I don't know it, I know where to find out. If anyone here wants a hand and I can help I would be only too happy.

With Excel, mainly I start off with Everyrace stats and build from there. I add in the results, Steward's Reports, and a few of my own filters to boot.


So I finally opened up the dreaded Microsoft Access and thought I could put it all in one place.



I hate Access! As of today. Could not make heads or tails of it. Everything is business orientated. Great if you want to store the details of each business customer. But what if your business customer has been in more than one race and sometimes they think he is a front runner and sometimes not? Can't have duplicate business partners can we?

My head was spinning trying to figure it all out. Do I have one table per horse with 30 odd columns of info for each race, or do I enter a different table for each race? Or each horse? I am now the proud possessor of 3 databases of complete cra pulance that I have no idea how to extract anything decent. I just stare at them and the tables stare back at me.

After 3 hours I retreated back to Excel. Databases are very stupid things, I've decided.

Some people love Access, though I think you need a degree in programming to get anywhere.

Have you looked at Filemaker or Alpha 5 databases, they are a lot easier to use, and have better built in functionality (easy to use).

The problem of Access is that they built it for advanced users who already know VBA and other coding. They built it for professionals.

Other database platforms have built in queries in simple language without having to code the entire thing from scratch.

All you need to do is plan your database, it doesn't necessarily have to be relational, it can be flat file like excel.

I peeked at your database and thought: "I can do that!"....well maybe not so good, but it would suit my purposes, just for me. LOL

But I gave myself a good dose of monkey see, monkey don't do.

I am pretty good with VBA. OK I guess. But you are right Access is suited for the workplace where someone is getting paid 22 an hour and he doesn't much care if it takes 40 hours to put it together.

Me, I got Sandown in Wednesday! :lol:

If you mean, all in one table, yes you can do it but that defeats the purpose, that's what spead sheets are for.

But you can still put it in one database , you will have to use different tables for the horses records, and have a few identifying records in each table to be able to connect the tables. In horse racing usually 3 records are enough, like date venue and race number.


They are not "stupid" they are a tool, different from a spread sheet, and if you learn to use them you will see the difference.
Very few serious developers actually code in VBA, the native language of Access. All front end apps. use C++ or later , VB, or later. much easier and a lot more flexible, Access is used just as a storehouse for data.

If Excel does what you want, use it. I know business people who run multi million dollar businesses on nothing more than Excel.

Excel 2007 can handle almost unlimited number of records, and Access 2007 has all the built in functions as Excel and the interface even looks like Excel.

Good luck