My questions to the group are, would it be legal
The north wind sample ships with every copy of MS access. You are absolute
free to do with that sample whatever you please to do so. I should point out
that it's kind of a lame example, and it's missing a lot of things, but it
is a good idea place to get some basic ideas of how to do things. You'll
rapidly find out that there's a lot of pieces and bits missing in that
sample (such as inventory used amounts don't update).
and how hard would it be to just change the company info and use that
database?
It is very easy to change the company information. As for modifying the
designs of the application, how long it takes you to learn that stuff is a
question in terms of saying how long does it take you to learn music? You
can learn to play a bit of music in a week. You can also spend five years
learning to play music. And, I know lots of people have been working at
their music sklls for 10+ years.
Learning the software develpumet process is much the same as learning music.
It isn't hard skill, but it does take time. I know a tremendous amount of
people who've taken music lessons, I don't know actually very many that make
a living playing music. I have to say software's almost near identical in
this conceptual ideal.
Only you can decide at this point in time if it's beneficial for you to
invest a lot of time to become pro efficient at using MS access. After these
baby steps are how most of us started down this road.
On the other hand if you're busy person try to run your business, I would
suggest that you purchase a system like "simply accouting", or one of the
other many applications that integrates things like purchase orders,
inventories, payroll etc. Keep in mind that some of these systems have
millions of dollars worth of developer time invested, and you can often
purchase these systems for what one day of a professional developer will
cost.
In a sense your question of how difficult this task is is asking the same
question is how difficult is it to learn play music? it's not really that
hard, and tons of kids in school to learn music all the time. It's really a
question of how much time you want to invest to learn this new skill.
Perhaps you might save more for your company by buying a home dentist kit,
and a dental drill. Or perhaps you take an auto Mechanic course and start
working on your company vehicles to save money. Or, in this case you learn
to modify this piece of software. The time and efforts to get good at any
these endeavors is all about the same. I know some people that have a
squeaky door, and have to call in a carpenter. I know other people that will
ripe the whole door out and build the door from scratch in their garage when
the door starts to creak and make noises. So the question herein is the kind
of time you want to invest to obtain the skills needed here, and how much
your time is worth.
If the northwind sample does most of what you what, then you may not have to
modify the northwind example much it all. However in my experience that
sample is a very weak and is a very simplistic sample, and your unlikely to
be able to run much of your business off that sample without extensive
modifications.
I think you'd be far better of to purchase somthing like simply counting or
other small business acctouing packages that also has things like sales
management and inventoried built in.
on the other hand the reason why a MS access is such a popular tool is
because you can build applications and customize things for your specific
business needs. I think if your business needs are not special or specific,
then go out purchase one of those general packages.
I suggest you spend a few days playing with that sample and access. You
should purchase a few books on MS access, as you just can't approach this
whole process by trial and error.
I don't want to discourage you in any way here, and there are tons of
secretaries, accountants, small business owners etc. that have built
applications that are extremely useful for their business in MS access, and
they have done so without any kind of formalized training.
