On Thu, 13 Oct 2005 23:25:22 GMT in C1C3f.19356$at1.6533@trnddc05 J Fortuna wrote:

Anyone else track watering schedules in a database, or am I weird in that
respect?

What other info do you track? I know I should probably add fields to my
database to track the date each orchid was last repotted, any other info
that it would be useful to track?

I currently keep a spread sheet. One "page" that tracks what I bought, when I
bought it, who I bought it from, my number for the plant. The original
vendor's number for the plant, the media it is currently potted in,
and the size of pot it's currently in.

Another that I use as a checklist for when to water, flush, fungicide...

I'm somewhat tempted to move to a "real database".
However, I've yet to even get through a gross analysis of your webmail
cgi-bin.
--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

"?" wrote in message
rg...
Snip
However, I've yet to even get through a gross analysis of your webmail
cgi-bin.
--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

Chris,

Ok, so if suspicion breeds confidence, am I supposed to be suspicious about
your analyzing of _my_ webmail cgi-bin, and how will that make me more
confident, and not really really concerned? Hmm.

In response to:
I currently keep a spread sheet.
snip
I'm somewhat tempted to move to a "real database".

I too started with a spreadsheet for my orchid info, and when I finally
moved to the database, I wished that I had done it a long time ago. Do think
more about it. It's definitely worth it. OrchidKitty's email shows some of
the really cool stuff that one can do with a database -- OrchidKitty, I am
really impressed! Even for less complex data, a database can be much more
organized and flexible than a spreadsheet. And the more data you have, the
more awkward the spreadsheet becomes. How many orchids do you have now,
Chris?

Joanna

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:38:41 GMT in RSE3f.24186$wm3.19828@trnddc01 J Fortuna wrote:
"?" wrote in message
rg...
Snip
However, I've yet to even get through a gross analysis of your webmail
cgi-bin.
--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

Chris,

Ok, so if suspicion breeds confidence, am I supposed to be suspicious about
your analyzing of _my_ webmail cgi-bin, and how will that make me more
confident, and not really really concerned? Hmm.

Be very concerned and how bad my mind is munging names :-).

In response to:
I currently keep a spread sheet.
snip
I'm somewhat tempted to move to a "real database".

I too started with a spreadsheet for my orchid info, and when I finally
moved to the database, I wished that I had done it a long time ago. Do think
more about it. It's definitely worth it. OrchidKitty's email shows some of
the really cool stuff that one can do with a database -- OrchidKitty, I am
really impressed! Even for less complex data, a database can be much more
organized and flexible than a spreadsheet. And the more data you have, the
more awkward the spreadsheet becomes. How many orchids do you have now,
Chris?

I agree that databases tend to work much better than spread sheets.
However, databases cannot be maintained for weeks on end with a printout
and a pencil or pen :-).
Moving to a database has been hindered by laziness and cheapness.
Open Office currently lacks something equivalent to access and rolling
my own database is going to lead to a tangent on generating tables for
printout and attempt #3 at writing a GUI app.

As for the orchids...

45 that are alive and in the sheet.
1 from the GF that is currently undergoing spag 'n bag because the GF rotted
the roots off.
3 ludisia being propagated via cuttings.
2 nobile dendrobiums being propagated from keikis.
1 ludisia propagated via cutting and given to GF.
1 ludisia propagated via cutting and sold.

We'll just not talk about the african violets, bromeliads,
spider plants, philodendrons, epihyllum, peppers, begonias ....

I refuse to worry until I'm in my 80s and one of my sprogs asks
"Just how many more ... are you going to propagate?" and I respond
"I don't know, how many more acres do I have left?"
(My granddad managed to cover a couple acres of land in South Carolina
in camelias before he died.)


--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

"?" wrote in message
rg...
On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:38:41 GMT in RSE3f.24186$wm3.19828@trnddc01 J
Fortuna wrote:
"?" wrote in message
rg...
Snip

In response to:
I currently keep a spread sheet.
snip
I'm somewhat tempted to move to a "real database".

I too started with a spreadsheet for my orchid info, and when I finally
moved to the database, I wished that I had done it a long time ago. Do
think
more about it. It's definitely worth it. OrchidKitty's email shows some
of
the really cool stuff that one can do with a database -- OrchidKitty, I
am
really impressed! Even for less complex data, a database can be much more
organized and flexible than a spreadsheet. And the more data you have,
the
more awkward the spreadsheet becomes. How many orchids do you have now,
Chris?

I agree that databases tend to work much better than spread sheets.
However, databases cannot be maintained for weeks on end with a printout
and a pencil or pen :-).
Moving to a database has been hindered by laziness and cheapness.
Open Office currently lacks something equivalent to access and rolling
my own database is going to lead to a tangent on generating tables for
printout and attempt #3 at writing a GUI app.

Well, you coud try MySQL. It is free, and if you get the administration app
available for it, creating new tables is as easy as it is in MS Access. I
have worked with both. MySQL is, though, a more serious, production quality
DB and so, for ease of entering data, and then viewing it, you'd need to
create a GUI App. You say you've tried to create a GUI App a couple times.
May I ask using what, and in what programming language? It is quite easy,
now, to create GUI applications using products like NetBeans (free from
www.netbeans.org) and Suns Java SDK (free from Sun). It is hard to beat
free. If you want to give it a try, using NetBeans and Java, and you get
stuck, just ask and I'll try to help you. But since I try to earn a living
doing this, I can't guarantee an instantaneous response. A terrific
resource for you are those Usenet newsgroups focussed on computer
programming, but again patience is sometimes required.

The fact is that spreadsheets are modelling tools, wholly inappropriate for
trying to maintain a database. But it is tempting to abuse them in this way
because it is so easy to use them to manage data. Using a spreadsheet to
manage data, though, is rather like using a hammer to drive a screw. You
can do it, but doing so is usually harder, and always less efficient, than
using the right tool, and it will eventually lead to significant problems.

I'd wager that Open Office doesn't have something like MS Access largely
because there are several open source DB products including, but not limited
to, MySQL and postgres.

Cheers,

Ted


--
R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making

Open Office does have a database, called (cleverly enough) BASE:

http://www.openoffice.org/product2/base.html

It apparently supports MS Access databases natively. I have yet to
try it. I've been using Open Office suite for a couple of months now; the
1.1.5 version has been remarkably useful. My third book is being written
in it as something of an experiment; the drawing program allows me to
create sketches and then insert them into the document. Now at 124 pages,
and not even 150 kilobytes in size- which given the stuff I've jammed in
there isn't too bad.

For those of you not aware, Open Office has a word processor, a
spreadsheet, a drawing program, and other goodies- for free. It can take
Microsoft files, and an upcoming release is expected to build
substantially on the existing version. Highly recommended.

http://www.openoffice.org

(It's free as in beer. Very nice.)

The email address in the header doesn't work. That's why I don't
reply to your emails.

-AJHicks
Chandler, AZ

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:22:20 -0400 in Ted Byers wrote:

I agree that databases tend to work much better than spread sheets.
However, databases cannot be maintained for weeks on end with a printout
and a pencil or pen :-).
Moving to a database has been hindered by laziness and cheapness.
Open Office currently lacks something equivalent to access and rolling
my own database is going to lead to a tangent on generating tables for
printout and attempt #3 at writing a GUI app.

Well, you coud try MySQL. It is free, and if you get the administration app
available for it, creating new tables is as easy as it is in MS Access. I
have worked with both. MySQL is, though, a more serious, production quality
DB and so, for ease of entering data, and then viewing it, you'd need to
create a GUI App. You say you've tried to create a GUI App a couple times.
May I ask using what, and in what programming language? It is quite easy,
now, to create GUI applications using products like NetBeans (free from
www.netbeans.org) and Suns Java SDK (free from Sun). It is hard to beat
free. If you want to give it a try, using NetBeans and Java, and you get
stuck, just ask and I'll try to help you. But since I try to earn a living
doing this, I can't guarantee an instantaneous response. A terrific
resource for you are those Usenet newsgroups focussed on computer
programming, but again patience is sometimes required.

I'm familiar with mysql (In fact it has become a somewhat important
part of my current job). I tend to keep away from Java. With the
appropriate libraries seems to be a decent, if slow, tool for providing
user interfaces. It seems to be wholly inadequate for data processing.
I'm old school C/sed/awk/perl/DB2 SQL including implementing state machine
parsers in perl and awk.

The first attempt, which was successful, was a problem tracking
application done in REXX with one of the GUI toolkits for REXX
in the early 90s (DB2 was the backend for the data).
The second attempt was a connect four game in Visual Age Small Talk.
I'm afraid that my viewpoint on object oriented programming was
indelibly tainted by someone more focused on the method than
the result.
It doesn't help that I'm one of those folks that doesn't see an issue
with inflicting an obscure positional grammar onto end users :-).

The fact is that spreadsheets are modelling tools, wholly inappropriate for
trying to maintain a database. But it is tempting to abuse them in this way
because it is so easy to use them to manage data. Using a spreadsheet to
manage data, though, is rather like using a hammer to drive a screw. You
can do it, but doing so is usually harder, and always less efficient, than
using the right tool, and it will eventually lead to significant problems.

In this case a spread sheet is a substitute for graph paper that is
less likely to be water damaged :-).
(Except it still gets water damaged because I work from printouts.)

I'd wager that Open Office doesn't have something like MS Access largely
because there are several open source DB products including, but not limited
to, MySQL and postgres.

When I say "Access" I really mean something like QMF and that
horrid GUI forms tool for DB2/2 from a decade past.
From what I've seen of Access is that it provides a more up to date
implementation of such functionality. However I'm not entirely
certain as it's almost always interfacing to the most braindead
database schema I've ever seen :-).


--
Chris Dukes
Suspicion breeds confidence -- Brazil

"?" wrote in message
rg...
On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 15:22:20 -0400 in
Ted Byers wrote:

[snip]
I'm familiar with mysql (In fact it has become a somewhat important
part of my current job). I tend to keep away from Java. With the
appropriate libraries seems to be a decent, if slow, tool for providing
user interfaces. It seems to be wholly inadequate for data processing.
I'm old school C/sed/awk/perl/DB2 SQL including implementing state machine
parsers in perl and awk.

I understand completely. My first programs were written two and a half
decades ago in fortran on punch cards. Remember those?

My first preference for programming is C++, but I find java today provides
decent performance. Sun has come a long way with it, even though their
support for generic programming is severely crippled. It used to be as slow
as molasses in January, but now it s reasonable. It isn't nearly as fast as
a binary produced by a good C++ compiler, but it is adequate for the problem
domains I use it for.

The first attempt, which was successful, was a problem tracking
application done in REXX with one of the GUI toolkits for REXX
in the early 90s (DB2 was the backend for the data).
The second attempt was a connect four game in Visual Age Small Talk.
I'm afraid that my viewpoint on object oriented programming was
indelibly tainted by someone more focused on the method than
the result.
It doesn't help that I'm one of those folks that doesn't see an issue
with inflicting an obscure positional grammar onto end users :-).

In this case, if we're talking professional software development, we'd be at
odds. I have never had a software project fail and a large reason for this
is that I take the user's needs and desires into account, producing an
interface that is intuitive and very easy to use, even if the user's skill
level is that he can only turn the computer on and use a word processor as a
glorified typewriter.


The fact is that spreadsheets are modelling tools, wholly inappropriate
for
trying to maintain a database. But it is tempting to abuse them in this
way
because it is so easy to use them to manage data. Using a spreadsheet to
manage data, though, is rather like using a hammer to drive a screw. You
can do it, but doing so is usually harder, and always less efficient,
than
using the right tool, and it will eventually lead to significant
problems.

In this case a spread sheet is a substitute for graph paper that is
less likely to be water damaged :-).
(Except it still gets water damaged because I work from printouts.)
I have seen whole computers fried because somebody spilled water on a
spreadsheet. ;-) Computers and water don't mix with good results.

My M.Sc. supervisor never used a text editor. Instead, he would write out
programs on paper, and I would have to enter them, and then debug them, for
him. And this was not that long ago.

I'd wager that Open Office doesn't have something like MS Access largely
because there are several open source DB products including, but not
limited
to, MySQL and postgres.

I have been corrected. Open Office does have a database called base. So
that means there is even less reason to use a spreadsheet. ;-)


When I say "Access" I really mean something like QMF and that
horrid GUI forms tool for DB2/2 from a decade past.
From what I've seen of Access is that it provides a more up to date
implementation of such functionality. However I'm not entirely
certain as it's almost always interfacing to the most braindead
database schema I've ever seen :-).

MS Access is a very good product, and quite appropriate in many contexts.
In some cases, I wowuld, and in fact have, used it. However, for most of
what I find myself doing lately, I have to use something more pwerful, such
as MySQL.

Cheers,

Ted


--
R.E. (Ted) Byers, Ph.D., Ed.D.
R & D Decision Support Solutions
http://www.randddecisionsupportsolutions.com/
Healthy Living Through Informed Decision Making