Multiple Database Front-ends
Many of our clients use Microsoft SQL Server for their enterprise database.
The product is robust, scaleable and has a full-featured set of database
management tools like Enterprise Manager, Profiler, and Query Analyzer.
One of the great things about a SQL database from the application
designer's viewpoint is the ease with which it supports multiple
front-ends. You can build your front-end application in Visual Studio
(for web or Windows applications), Microsoft Access or Microsoft
FrontPage. You can also create different front-ends using the same
product, e.g. one Access front-end for data editing and one for viewing
reports.
Consider an application that requires inputs from many people at many
places - like school nurses in a large unified school district. Each time a
child sees a nurse, that nurse is required to submit a report containing the
student's name, the place of the injury, the circumstances, the body part
which was injured, and the severity of the injury. Nurses cannot view any
past incidents, only create new ones. A simple HTML interface is all that is
needed for the nurses; a form containing a dozen or so fields is connected
through the internet to the back-end SQL Server.
A risk assessment professional reviews all reports submitted by nurses,
but never creates a new one. When a nurse's report has been reviewed, an
assessor decides whether or not the incident requires any further
investigation. If so, the assessor investigates the incident and records
additional notes. If not, the assessor closes the incident. The assessor may
change a nurse's report if further investigation reveals additional facts or
if new information has come to light since the initial report was filed.
There may be only one or two assessors and their needs are more complex. For
retrieval of past incidents, identification of open issues, and editing of
records MS Access offers a complete set of queries and forms. The
front-end of choice for the assessment professionals is Access.
At the end of each month, health and safety managers view reports to see
where the most accidents occur, what body part is most frequently involved
and other descriptions that allow the district to make the environment more
safe for the students. Sometimes the managers create queries on the fly for
special reports to the district or to insurance companies. They need an
interface which only draws from the database - no data entry or editing.
Again, Access is the front-end of choice but a different file is used for
management - one which contains no data editing forms, only queries, reports
and graphs.
Each of these groups - the nurses, the assessors and the health and
safety managers - work with the same database. But each group has a
different way of working with the data, so each requires a different
interface. If you have a disparate group of users all working on the same
data, contact us to see how we can help
you create the right front-end for each group.