I'm Looking for a Database Wizard!

[hcrouch@mchsi.com]

This is not a personal project.  It is a work project. (Ok, it’s still a
personal project, isn’t it.)

I am responsible for environmental affairs at three manufacturing facilities in
central Illinois.  Each of these facilities paints plastic parts.  Between the
three facilities, there are 54 paint booths and approximately 100 paint
formulations.  Some paint booths use one paint formulation for months at a time.
 Other booths will use ten paint formulations in one month, and ten different
formulations the next month.  Two or three new formulations appear each month
(and two or three old formulations are discontinued).  Each booth keeps a daily
record of paint usage by formulation.
 
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) requires monthly calculation of
volatile organic chemicals (VOC) emissions from these paint booths.  They have
developed a number of creative (!) ways in which they expect data to be presented. 

A spreadsheet is presently being used to perform the required calculations.  The
good news is that I’ve got something that is working, which means that I am able
to describe in painstaking detail exactly what it takes to get from data-in to
report-out.  

The bad news is that this is just not an appropriate use of a spreadsheet.  If 
each paint booth would use the same paint formulation(s) month after month, I
could get by with the spreadsheet.  But the month-to-month changes cause me to
have to constantly move, massage, manipulate and otherwise mess with the
structure of the spreadsheet.  I’m working way too hard maintaining this puppy. 

My goal is to get an application refined to the point that the data entry clerk
is able to spit out reports at the end of each month, and I’ll never be free of
this assignment until I get to that point. I don’t anticipate a great deal of
progress as long as I continue to use a spreadsheet.

All PeeCees in this company use Windows 2k.  That means I need a database that
works under Windows.  MySQL, I understand, works under windows, so it might be a
candidate.  Linux isn’t an option at this point.  There is one Linux advocate in
MIS.  He has installed a Red Hat server and is planning on installing a second,
but he can only push so hard.  No, Johnathon, BSD is not an option either.  :-(

I tried moving this project onto the corporate database.  No joy.  MIS is using
RPG on an IBM mainframe, and they normally deal with accounting functions ($ in,
$ out, widgets in, widgets out...).  They are interested, but we haven’t yet
found common ground. 

So, I’m wondering if it’s possible to have a stand-alone installation of MySQL
on a PeeCee.  If there is a database Wizard out there interested in continuing
this discussion, please e-mail harold_crouch (at) NAL (dot) com, and I will
provide a copy of one of the spreadsheets.  

Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!

- Harold


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