Connect Chief to a Relational Database like Oracle, Sqlserver, or MS Access?


SusanC
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I want to be able to store Chief schedules into a relational database such as Oracle, etc. so that I will have a central database for all of our projects and can manage them easier.  For example, timing of shipping, orders received, etc.  Be able to query and generate a report.

 

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the only standard interface I have seen is the catalogs. They are accessible by SQL lite. But that does not help you. But given your use case, if if CA had an API into their files, you would need a a constantly running program which checks for updates to all CA files in user specified directories, and then run an "integrity update" every once in awhile. You would also need a key name specified within the CA file which matched the SQL db.

 

I would suggest the simpler option is once you are done the schedules, export them to a certain directory with the key field in the filename, and then write a program to suck them into SQL. 

 

I wrote a program years ago which did this, and there are many Extract-Transform-Load programs which may even avoid any programming altogether, but you still have to export them manually

 

 

 

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Don't overlook Excel, especially the pivot table capabilities.  I read something a year or so ago that Microsoft was making Excel Pivot tables the flagship of personal computing.  From what I understood, they were backing off on future development of Accel because of this shift in focus.  So, looking forward, Excel may be worth your time to check out.

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Thank you Chopsaw and RodCole.  I am familiar with pivot tables, but I don't think they are going to help me in this application.  I'm trying to manage data across a number of projects and be able to extract information across those projects to coordinate deliveries, order times, etc.  We generally run 10-15 projects at a time with cabinet orders, fixture orders, hardware orders, etc. Nothing comes in as a complete order so we're trying to keep track of a lot of moving pieces and currently accomplish this manually with Excel spread sheets and Chief schedules that we export as .csv files and attach to the spread sheet.  I just wanted to automate some of this. 

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