The table structure is pretty simple although I can not make up my
mind on how I want my relations to work out for the other tables
involving the fish and plants. Right now it's only tracking records
of test results and basic tank information. When I get to the fish
and plants it gets a little tricker. Next week I'll probably make it
to that part of it and I'll have my mind made up by then.


The things that relate, are tanks and water chemistry, unless I'm seeing it
wrong..
_________
Tank and Size
Chemistry
ph
gh
kh
am
Nitritrate
Nitratrate
Buffers used/not used/ Other
Fish
# of
breeds and broods
Added and Date added, maybe sex
plants
ferts
maintenance
freq.
% water change
Substrate

As far as the platform...I think web is the best as well, but for that
to work the users would need prebuilt versions of Apache, PHP, and
MySQL. MySQL is a requirement no mater what platform I eventually
decide on as the database would be horrible if kept in a flat file,
but for the front end I could whip something up in C and supply
precompiled binaries for Win32 and Linux.

Unless you make it simpler than breathing, most of the common public won't
be too interested...

Another thought I had last night are automated controllers. My
brother is a CS Major at PSU and is quite good with micro controllers
and their hardware level programming. I should talk to him to see how
hard it would be to interface some hardware to a PC via USB for
automatically recording temp, pH, CO2, etc and pushing the data
directly into the SQL DB automagically.

You could be on to something there, atleast for those who choose to use
it... Having your tank PC monitored is a neat idea, as long as you keep it
as simple as possible...

Good luck