Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

well there are a few aesthetic issues in website building and that's too much animation or too much content!!! another way of saying "don't wanna have waste time to sit though the muck"

What a database can do that a spreadsheet can't, is to come up with results specific to your needs rather than the whole nine yards of sheet to look at.

Thanks for your approval for me to go ahead and create

Out of curiosity Frank... the existing data in the spreadsheet... are those values minimum requirements for soil based plant nutritional needs (uptake)... or suggested fertiliser supplementation for soil based crops??

Frank, from a purist point of view, no it can't.
A spread sheet is a table.
Many tables CAN make a database, but don't necessarily.
Excel has been trying to make itself a pseudo-database for years, and is the most powerful spreadsheet program I know. It is useful for many things, but there are some things that a db can handle that excel would fail at.
Preservation of data.
Simple non redundant data.
the ability to sort assimilate and crossreference data QUICKLY
no limitations like 65535 rows or 256 columns (although heaps of cols are a bad idea in dbs)
the sheer size, (or lack there of) required to store data.

Their downsides: Useability - you would probably have NFI where to start, but you have the gumption to start somewhere. This is where Excel excels, it's also where Excel is most commonly misused, and becomes a heap of crap

They are a geek thing, and it's an anal point, but Excel is not a database, and neither is any other spreadsheet. It's merely a list storing device with fancy tools.

anyhow for a purist point of view, I think i've prattled long enough
(I think your spreadsheet is very interesting btw)

KP thanks for pressing my point still its a very professional looking work hygicell did.

w00t!! I love crunching numbers. I don't do it for a job, though as a service cashier I'm kinda dealing with numbers but at the very basic level. I think I should be crunching at a higher level though, I don't know where to start!! lol... silly ain't it.

thanks all for the support and the willingness to cooperate

I use Excel a lot, as I have learned to "handle" it more or less for my purposes

never got around to familiarize myself with MS Access though I do have an MS Office 2002 Professional license
I find it a miss though and maybe this is an opportunity to remedy to it

I am always eager to learn
but my version is probably hopelessly outdated
and a new one is out of my financial reach because of other priorities

besides I resent more than a bit BG's monopoly
and the way companies like Nokia adapt to it

I was forced to drop MS Outlook when last week I changed my mail client provider
because it seemed impossible to reconfigure it (probably due to my lack of knowledge)

so now I use Thunderbird and Sunbird
but I cannot sync my Nokia phone agenda to them
all extremely frustrating
missed an appointment yesterday as result

so maybe there are alternatives to MS

some open source database?

frank

MSAccess is PODS. Excel is a much better program. Access is not even multi user.

Borland interbase, then called firebird, now called interbase is no longer free, but when it went back to interbase, it Firebird continued on as freeware, don't think it's open source, but come on, who care how it works, or has the effort to want to change it them selves!

Other issues with serious relational databases, is that they rarely have front ends. When they do, they're often lousy. I spend a good 10% of my time at work designing dbs in Firebird.
I spend a further 10% designing custom gui front-ends for them.
IF it's a path you want to take, I'll lend what assistance I can, however, one of the best reasons for using excel is the lack of complexity (unless you do some pure evil to twist it to your ways - seriously, I'm not guilty ) so I'd stay with that for now.
I still haven't wrapped my head around the whole spreadsheet, and how it might hang together better.... but I'm working on that. Tonight. today, I'm digging

Frank you know your sites only lead to an email address. Why don't you link or divert them to another aquaponics site until your ready. Three years is a long time for people in Europe to have to keep googling to find what they want. You could at least point them in the right direction.

[quote="Dufflight"Frank you know your sites only lead to an email address. Why don't you link or divert them to another aquaponics site until your ready. Three years is a long time for people in Europe to have to keep googling to find what they want. You could at least point them in the right direction. [/quote]
I am thinking of posting an introductory page and a links page on each of them Duff
need some help with selection of the links

frank

Why not some of the most basic ones and popular ones for now? Like the one from america, BYAP forum, the australian one and I think there's one in england.
Its not like they're going to care where its from unless they really dig into the idea of Aquaponics. and when they do, they'll look for links on those sites... I love networking.