On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 3:52 PM, Nick Rout <nick.r...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 4, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Roy Britten <roy.brit...@gmail.com> wrote: > <snip> > A spreadsheet is capable of producing reports, and if there are only a few >> changes for kid X then a cut and paste from last term's spreadsheet line to >> this term's is pretty damn simple, and not really time consuming at all. > > > We all know spreadsheets are not databases, despite the fact many people > use them as such, but is their existing solution just being badly managed? > I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would not just print out a > report from last term and say "change anything that needs updating and sign > it" - then do a c&p and make any necessary changes > These are really good points. Spreadsheets could probably do the job but they require a lot of discipline, a lot of patience and a lot of technical expertise to make them work for a job that could blow out in size and complexity at any time. > >> They have a budget to implement a "proper" solution for tracking kids' >> details. They've been quoted five-figure sums for American >> off-the-shelf solutions which seems a bit much. >> > "Off the shelf" (read proprietary) solutions aren't much better, they cost a huge sum just for an installation and the you *still* need to get it going for the business. If you pay for an outfit to develop it from OS technology stacks then you will save them money in the long run. > I reckon this list is a good place to discuss suitable OS/Linux >> solutions. Go! I'll start with: can OpenOffice (or LibreOffice, or >> whatever) be customised up to support this sort of thing? >> >> > Open/Libre have database hooks - there is a menu for LibreOffice Base in > my Linux Mint system. However I would have thought a LAMP based system > would be a possible answer. > Using something like Rails,Django or Cake someone should be able to put something together reasonably quickly. > > There are libraries for producing pdf reports from databases or other > data, reportlab for example. > > Whether the costs of setting something like that up and maintaining it is > any less than 5 figures, I don't know. > To get someone who actually knows what is required to do this will almost certainly cost into the 5 figures. even if it is low 5 figures. >From your description (disclaimer: I am hazarding an educated guess from your description) to write this shouldn't be much more than a week or 2 of work but the main thing is the maintenance and ongoing tweaks. You will need to talk to an outfit who wants this kind of work. Try talking to the guys at Egressive ( http://egressive.com/ ) It's a local Open Source development company. If they don't want the job, they might be able to point you at someone who does. HTH, Zane -- ------------------------------------------- Zane Gilmore
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