Database Advice Needed Please

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tbchampions

Hello! My first post here, and I'm hopeful someone will be kind enough to help me with a project I'd very much like to undertake.

I have a horse racing website. With the start of the year, I would like to enter all the race results of graded stakes (the highest level of races) into a database that can be searched by various means by website users.

I have NO idea where to even start. I hoped to find some kind of "database builder" software but I'm having no luck.

The race entries would have many, many fields. In addition to the name of the race, grade, distance, track surface, track condition, and track, I would also have fields for every horse in the race, where he or she finished, and its jockey, trainer, owner, breeder, sire, and dam.

Then, during the year, someone could search by sire to see which stallions are doing well, or search by horse to see what that horse has done, or by trainer, to see his stats. Etc.

This would be a tremendous resource, but I've no idea where to start. Can someone give me advice, please, on what kind of software something like this would take? And hopefully, one that's friendly to this user -- a newbie at creating databases.

I appreciate much any and all help.

Thanks!

ray326

First, your host will need to have a database manager like MySQL and a programming environment like PHP available for your use.

tbchampions

Yes, thanks, I do have that.

What I'm looking for are database software recommendations to build the front end. The more user-friendly, the better.

Anyone?

Bullschmidt

And perhaps this may hopefully give you some ideas:

Web Database Concept
http://www.bullschmidt.com/concept.asp

philiphooker

We have a product that might help you called OpenPoint. It lets you create web-based reporting and data entry screens for databases (such as SQL Server, MS Access, or pretty much anything else -- we used MS Excel as a DB once!) and it takes care of such things as menus, security, and logging user activity. If you are interested, we've put a viewlet on our web site so you can see how it works. Also, we've created demo application (OpenPoint Issue Tracker ), which is a free, fully functional issue tracker.

The database you pick for your site depends on lots of factors (budget, scale of the application, technical experience, etc.). We generally model our applications in something simple (such as MS Access) and then upsize to SQL Server once we are happy with the way the app looks.

Here's a link to the viewlet OpenPoint viewlet

And here's a link to our site: www.faxone.com