FREE FOOD AND BEER!!!! also need some DB help

[incremental]

So yeah. I've got some data that I'd like to store in some sort of application. What I'd like is for it to store the data I give it into a txt file(notepad) and that when it first gets loaded that it will be empty but afterwards write data I give it to file and be able to reload that information from the txt file. For the sake of simplicity and understanding lets just assume the data I'm interested in is a person's name, address, and phone number in the form of:

John Deere (TAB) 123 Apple St. (TAB) [phone]

I know I could probably figure out how to code this myself using the console application feature of any of the normal C++ programs out there. What I'd like to do is have an application that is not in the form of the console and more interface-y. I'm not sure where to start or how to go about doing anything towards getting this done. I'd like to get some help walking through some of the basics if possible. I learn better by being shown examples and the workings of it step-by-step. Thanks.

[kbw]

What compiler/environment are you using?

[incremental]

Lets say for the sake of this that I'm a business owner with zero/little experience with technical expertise and that I'd like to make a database for my work computer that can handle inputting/updating entries for persons. Is this still doable?

[kbw]

Sure. You can play around with this sort of thing quite easily with a database. Here's a sample using SQLite. Once you download it, you will have a program, sqlite3. Here's what you can do from the command line.

sqlite3 db "CREATE TABLE Persons(name TEXT, address TEXT, phone TEXT)"

sqlite3 db "INSERT INTO Persons VALUES('John Deere', '123 Apple St.', '[phone]')"

sqlite3 db "SELECT * FROM Persons"
John Deere|123 Apple St.|[phone]

Voilà, data storage with no code.

To do more, you can check out SQL at:
http://w3schools.com/sql/default.asp

and SQLite at:
http://www.sqlite.org/docs.html

You can customise your app with C++ as it's easy to use with SQLite.

[incremental]

I think what I want is something I can get with excel but I hate using excel and want something in an application that's not made my Microsoft. I think I just need to stop worrying about it and just settle with using a working product.

[kbw]

I don't know if they still do Access, but that would be more like it. There are alternatives to Microsoft Office, like Open Office.

[P4r10]

How about the free beer?

[sfBlackfox]

Open office was recently updated and now is part of apache. I think it's worth checking out, as they generally do a pretty good job.

Also, as you're not hot on Ms, might want to switch to a Linux Distro like Ubuntu :)

[Computergeek01]

Don't use Open Office, it was recently acquired by Apache and the development has suffered for it. If you are learning everything from the beginning anyway you should go with Libre Office. It has fewer bugs and, currently, a larger development base: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

[incremental]

I know I left this post vacant for a really long time but I just felt I should update it for some closure. What I wanted was to have a set of data that instead of having 5 tables with the same data and have to always sort it after each change, that I could store the data in one table and just sort by clicking on the top of each column. I'm sure I could probably code something in C++ and just save it to a txt file but I wanted something more reasonably graphic. In any case, Excel is working the way I need it and have used macros to do the lion's share of the work.

Ex:

A B C D E
D D D D D
D D D D D
D D D D D
D D D D D
D D D D D
D D D D D

Clicking on the A-E would sort the data keeping each row together but sorting the column in ascending-descending order. Once again Excel does this but requires quite a bit more work.

Anyways, peace.