Is Access 2003 the right program for me?

[culedude]

Before I start on this seemingly endless journey of learning Access 2003, I thought it appropriate to ask the question;

Will this program do what I need it to do?

I apologise in advance if this is not the right place to ask the question, I am a complete beginner to Access 2003.

I want to make an electronic log book for the guys at work, there are 5 people of different trades who would need to keep the log.

A typical entry would be as follows

Mon 22/3/06 Alan Smith B Shift

Compressor house (heading)
No 1 compressor (plant)
Oil pump (component)
Filter cleaned (action taken)

Personel (heading)
John Jones (personel)
Phoned in sick at 15:00hrs, will phone tomorrow to update

Boiler house (heading)
No 4 boiler (plant)
Water vlave leak (problem)
Tightened gland (action taken)

There are many headings, probably hundreds of plant, thousands of components and actions taken

We would need to view events to particular plant or areas between certain dates, some personel would need to enter data, some would only view the data without being able to enter it, few would need to alter the data.

Is Access 2003 capable of this, should I start the journey?

regards
culedude

 

[Banana]

Yes it is perfectly capable of this.

Access makes for a great start because it's so scalable. If designed correctly, it can easily go from a single user database to a enterprise solution using a server/client archtierhure..

You can make it much easier if you take on the effort to understand what constitutes a good database design. Read up on database theory and normalization, get some good book. (I highly recommend Alison Balter's Developer Handbook to Access 2003)

HTH.