I am considering a funny idea.
It started from a request to build a database in replacement of many small spreadsheets and a badly designed database.
The main requirement is flexibility.
I delayed this project by more than six months, but it could be fun now for the holidays.
If I want to keep things simple and aim at flexibility, I think I should forget about defining entities and specific tables.
So, I should forget about tables for stock levels, for materials, for chemical properties, ...
The best way to define what has to be done is the following:
This looks very much like a simplified kind of daily-based spreadsheet where formulas would refer to data on the same day or the day before. The formulas would be rather simple but could change from time to time. There could be also new formulas from time to time.
Basically, a record in the database I am thinking of would look like this:
Have you ever seen a database designed to mimick a spreadsheet?
I would enjoy looking at that.
It started from a request to build a database in replacement of many small spreadsheets and a badly designed database.
The main requirement is flexibility.
I delayed this project by more than six months, but it could be fun now for the holidays.
If I want to keep things simple and aim at flexibility, I think I should forget about defining entities and specific tables.
So, I should forget about tables for stock levels, for materials, for chemical properties, ...
The best way to define what has to be done is the following:
numbers have to be collected or calculated every day,
calculations involve only current day and previous day data,
calculation formulas are user-defined data
This looks very much like a simplified kind of daily-based spreadsheet where formulas would refer to data on the same day or the day before. The formulas would be rather simple but could change from time to time. There could be also new formulas from time to time.
Basically, a record in the database I am thinking of would look like this:
(day, item, formula, value, responsible people, ...)
Have you ever seen a database designed to mimick a spreadsheet?
I would enjoy looking at that.
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