On Wed, 2005-10-26 at 22:27 +0100, Cherry Cullen wrote:
> Can any of you IT gurus advise me please. I have created an Excel
> spreadsheet with the contact details of consultants etc. The plan is to
> have a searchable database that everyone can tap into when looking for phone
> numbers etc. I know I can export the excel data into Access, but what I
> want to know is can I keep the original spreadsheet and if new data is put
> into the spreadsheet will it automatically update
Don't do it like that.
If you had some bizarre urge to use Access, you should write a database,
and update through that, using it to constrain you to correctness, not
use a spreadsheet. Better to use LDAP, which is the correct solution in
fact...
But you don't need a database!
Unless your population is on the order of the whole consultant
population of the UK (say you were doing the first half of Choose and
Book, and doing it properly) you don't need the features in databases
that help several people query them at once and by indexing help one
person find an answer faster...
And you certainly don't need, in the use-case as given - the features
special to a database - relational integrity and multiple concurrent
updates from multiple locations. So avoid the complication.
DO it like this:-
Collect your data in any fashion you like, into a master document, whcih
you keep close to yourself and safe. Nobody else is allowed to update
that. Excel would be OK, as of course is OpenOffice Calc 2.0
Export it as a comma separated fvalue file (CSV) using the file export
or file save as menu and picking that file type...
THis is your working file...
Place the working file where everyone can see it (in the directory
served by your Apache webserver for instance), if it is a small group,
and let them just do Ctrl F to find the details on the page.
FOr a larger list, say 2000 lines, my preferred tool is grep, and I'd
approach it through either a shell script or presumably a batch file...
and mediate that through either a terminal session (easy) or some back
end script on a web page (less easy).
cat consultantlist.csv | grep %1
is the command, you tuck that into a short file, called consultant and
make it executable, and then someone wanting the details for
Ponsonby-Smythe types
consultant onsonby
and gets
Ponsonby-Smythe, Charles Featherby, 0792 999999, General Surgeon,
Nuffield; Royal infirmary, etc, etc, etc
There are various PHP recipes if you want to do it through a
web-browser...
LDAP - lightweight directory access protocol - a protocol for accessing
a lightweight directory which is what you have got...<g>
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