Hello everyone,

First of all I would like to thank you all for this community it has been a great wealth of information so far.

My dilemma is this:

I am starting my very first Database project by myself.

I have done all my theory e.g. Software development techniques (Iterative, Waterfall, Agile), HCI and Database engineering and I have done several software projects (databases and programming) but in the safety net of a supervisor and lecturer.

Now the safety net is gone and I am about to embark on this journey by myself which I am very excited about doing. However I feel a bit nervous and slightly lost with so many questions bugging me (is this normal for a rookie developer?).

I guess once I make the start in the project all the theory I have learned will come into play.

-------------

For my project I will be designing a database to gather numerical data of times taken for each process in an overall procedure to complete and will then provide systems to analyse where efficiencies could be improved etc.

e.g. To complete procedure X there is the following steps
A (took 14mins) - B (took 7 mins) - C (took 3 mins) - D ( took 4 mins) = procedure X complete

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

There is more detail that will be involved for each step but this is just purely to illustrate my project.

My clients will then put this information into a template spreadsheet where each recorded set of data is being stored on a page.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

They have an idea themselves that they basically want to submit each excel document to the database using DTS to add it to the database.
Then they would use DTS to extract information and place it on yet another excel document where they would then perform statistical analysis on the data e.g. (standard deviation , f functions etc.)

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I have not come accross DTS as I am only familiar with mySQL and I have researched into MS SQL and DTS and it seems a lot of effort to implement if only a small amount of data is being added each time to the database.

So I have come up with two alternatives:

-Create a website with multiple forms to submit a variety of data to the database

or

-Create a .net 32 application (C++) that submits data to the database

This would eliminate the need to use an excel document to gather info.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Also will a Relational Database be best suited to storing information like this?

I have my doubts at there will be many different processes with varying amounts of stages which would either mean I create lots of tables for each Process

Or just have different record types sharing the same tables which will mean some columns will not be used etc which I am worried could cause mess and possibly Cascading?

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I was wondering if anyone could point to some literature on statistics with a Relational Database.

Any comments or words of advice would be welcome.


Also I am planning on using an Iterative-Spiral development method (what do you think?)

Thanks for your time

(is this normal for a rookie developer?).

Yep.

You are way overthinking the whole thing and using MS Access or creating some custom forms for MS Excel would probably be simpler.
From the information given it sounds like you are creating an application for building "Gantt charts" which are used in time and project management, and Excel has these built in to it "chart" tool.


To be honest all the theoretical stuff isn't helping you one bit and you need to go right back to basics and flow chart what you want to achieve.