Stores Filing System - Considerations

v 0.21

When I'm not away on my "real" job, I spend time with a group called "HARS" - the "Historical Aircraft Restoration Society".  One of the projects there is to repair the damage on the replica "Southern Cross" Fokker Tri-Motor (the original is safely housed in a display at Brisbane Airport).  I was asked "Can you come up with a program to allow us to keep track of the parts here - BUT - it has to be SIMPLE!!

No problems I thought - I can just use LibreOffice or a simple database program .. but as I found, it is not quite as simple as that.  Simple programs are not simple.

The first obstacle is that if you use a database program of whatever kind on a single computer, the stores system is useless if you don't have THAT computer available.  Sharing the database file is a kludge that rapidly becomes really scary.

Next, I talked to the guys that looked after the servers there.  They immediately told me that they already had a stores database system there - would I like to look at it and get it going?  Absolutely!  Unfortunately, after a LOT of reading and thinking about it, I realised that this stores system, whilst available over a network was designed for companies that had dedicated and trained people who used it all the time.  A 70 year old Aircraft Engineer who had spent his career with paper and files would not have a hope of walking up to this system and doing what he wanted - especially since he was here to play with aircraft for fun, not learn how to use a complex computer program.  So after a lot of time trying to find out what I'd missed about the program, I realised I hadn't missed anything and that it was quite unsuitable for what we needed.

Perhaps I could get them to install PostgreSQL as a relational database manager and I could then write something to connect to it in LibreOffice, or a scripting language or whatever ...... I was met with looks of suspicion (which I can understand, given some of the "offers" of assistance these people have had in the past).  More street Cred needed before I proceed down that path.

After some thinking, I finally settled on trying a system using Google Docs and Google Script.  The more I looked at it, the better it seemed for what I want.  It was in "The Cloud", it could be accessed from anywhere and on any Internet enabled device.  Now to work out how to implement it.



Later ............