Spreadsheets have transformed business. But there are limitations in what spreadsheets can provide, and then database solutions are needed.
The snag is finding a suitable way to provide a database. The obvious solutions turn out not to be easy to set up and they often place many restrictions on the layouts of forms.
As web sites are increasingly built around databases, they have enabled cheap database applications to be developed. The software needed is mostly open source, and available without charge. John McMillan has developed several applications around intranets. These are like private web sites. Operators use their browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox) to control the application.
Forms and selection lists in a browser
Click on an image to enlarge
One of the former users of McMIllan's cCOPE package needed a simple way to read and print data from the old cases. This needed 5 tables, the main one being a case. Any case could have any numbers of complainants and owners and an unlimited number of history records. There was a table of address keys. As well as the main case display, we had to provide lists of complainants, owners and address keys and allow searching through those lists. There were several ways to open a case. John provided a simple low cost intranet to provide web pages and forms to achieve this.
