best possible solution?

[Angry Ninja]

Hello all, and thank you in advance for any help provided.

Currently I am planning and mapping out(Divide and Conquering!!) a new project that will accept/calculate yearly, monthly, weekly sales totals, aswell as other customer oriented info, and compare the figures with previous years.

So far, I have brainstormed on outputting/saving the data to a CSV file and then implementing a search function that will get the needed data, compare, and display to the client. I have also considered creating a calendar so to speak where the client can simply click on a day, which will then display the desired totals.

I am hitting a huge road block when trying to determine the best possible approach to this. The fact that this is all organized by dates is what I believe is throwing me off.

To sum this all up, I was hoping to create a think tank and bounce some ideas off of you all? It always helps me to vocalize my thoughts and my wife will no longer allow me to talk "code" to her anymore!

Thanks again!!

[nedo]

I suggest you use another format for your "data base". You could maybe try to use an ms access db. It's relatively easy to work with. And i think it would be easyer for you to find information in that database.For the connection to the db you could use odbc or any other of the of the connection types.

[SamuelAdams]

I agree, access is already designed to do this, with data import functions, reports, and charting and so on.

Once you put your data in the database, I would start small, since you may find you need to change the database a few times.
Then you'll build reports that will generate reports or charts, what ever you like.

[IceThatJaw]

If you need some help designing the Database or class schema just post all the data you need to store and work with.

Having a relational database that is normalized will make things much easier for you in the end. It makes your queries slightly more difficult but you can eliminate repeated data and also take advantage a the databases ability to perform cascading updates and deletes.

[Angry Ninja]

Thank you all for responding and providing your input. I will consider MS Access for this project, however it does raise a question. By using MS Access, my program will be dependent on my client having MS Access installed on their machine?

[majidkamali1370]

Use SQLite instead. it's prretty light and fast. (about 300 Kb)
add that DLL to your project. and your program becomes client and platform independent :)
www.sqlite.org

[Angry Ninja]

haha thanks Maji...I was just thinking about SQLite today!

[Angry Ninja]

holy S**T...has anyone seen the hoops one must go through in order to get SQLite to work with VS2012!!

[nedo]

From what i remember i don't think so. If i remember corectly i was usually testing some of my code on a virtual box with only windows xp sp2 installed and nothing else. And the app was working withouth needing the ms acces/office to be installed.

[majidkamali1370]

SQLite is a server-less SQL engine. just add that DLL to your project and it works.
look in www.sqlite.org for C/C++ tutorials.

[S6k9GNh0]

There are no more hoops than any other library. You include the headers and link against the libraries, which you may or may not have to compile yourself. Just like any library.