Real World Access (18)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

John Nurick's contacts

The database I developed for the small management consultancy where I work tracks contacts (persons and the organisations they belong to and move between), sales and jobs (and several other things). It's used mostly as a contact manager and as a sales tool (e.g. "what jobs have we previously done for this sort of client/in this subject area/involving this combination of services?"). There's also module that lets people maintain lists of contacts for mailshots, invitations, and so on, and another one that handles subscriptions for the house journal. In the same back end, but accessed via a different front end, it tracks visitor numbers, prices and other information on visitor attractions.

Its name is FIDO. When we launched it four or five years ago I offered a bottle of champagne for anyone in the company who could say what FIDO stands for. There have been some good guesses (my favourite was "Facts In, Dross Out") but no one has managed it yet.

Tags: Microsoft+Access

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Real World Access (17)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

John Viescas's projects

Some of my more interesting projects:

1) Golf tournament scheduling database for the Guadalmina Golf Club, Malaga, Spain - includes automatic calculation for each type of tournament based on dynamic input parameters and course slope.

2) Property appraisal database for a company in Iowa.  Includes ability to import new property records from the counties of interest.  (Each county keeps track of different data in different formats.)

3) Customer support database (actually, one of my sons built this with my help) to handle 100+ simultaneous users (call center support personnel) with unbound forms and local report tables.

4) Sales, ordering, and inventory control database for a marine diesel repair and parts sales shop in the Seattle area.

5) Flood hazard determination tracking database for mortgage applications. Includes remote workers who use Replication to synchronize their daily work with the master file at the end of each workday.

6) Police K9 event tracking system - includes "encounters" with perps as well as periodic training and dog medical records.  In use by Las Vegas PD, Tampa PD, and several others.  Written in Access 97 with custom "replication" of data collected on laptops in police vehicles to central records store and reporting database.

Tags: Microsoft+Access, Micro-ISV

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Real World Access (16)

One of a series of articles about where Microsoft Office Access applications have found a real-world niche.

John Vinson's animals

I've been working for some years now with the Los Angeles Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (LA-SPCA). They run a very large operation including field agents who respond to calls (handled by up to four dispatchers) about abused, neglected, or sick animals; they have an animal shelter which takes in some 25,000 animals a year.

They use Access to track all steps: the dispatchers track all phone calls (using conditional formatting to color-highlight high-urgency calls, for instance); the shelter uses the application to keep track of all impounded animals (when they were impounded, from where, what kennel the animal is in, what medical treatment did it get, who is fostering it, who adopted it, etc.). For another agency we've added a module to handle dog licenses in eight cities (with eight different calendars and fee structures), all Access table driven.

Tags: Microsoft+Access

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