The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - between excel, access and lotus notes

between excel, access and lotus notes

I am trying to put together a database of information on about 450 supreme court cases. Each case contains data on dates of appeals and lower court cases, number of victims and number of accused people as well as textual data such as the location of the crime by state, evidence used to convict, and some remarks of the bench. i want the database to serve both as a record of these cases as well as be able to answer questions like how long did it take from the intial date of arrest till the final sentencing? how many cases with more than victim took place in a particular state? and so on.

i thought of using excel because that is the software with which i am most familiar but i am not sure whether it can handle such large amounts of textual data. other people have suggested access or lotus notes but i am not sure whether either of these can handle my statistical requirements. does anybody in this forum have any advice?

Divya G.
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

My instinct without thinking too deeply would be to use Excel as a platform for analysis and Access as your database.

Excel is okay as a simple database, but if you think your project might expand I'd recommend putting your DB elsewhere (e.g. Access), which would take the heat off you if you had to amend the DB structure.

Joel Goodwin
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Don't ever use Lotus Notes for anything

http://www.lotusnotessucks.4t.com/

Gary
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

I'd go for access if I were you.

Eric Debois
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

You don't say if you have a budget for this nor do you mention what tools the intended audience has. Excel and Access are common and either could probably get the job done. Notes is quite capable of handling the task, but might be more costly if your audience doesn't already have Notes.

Bruce Perry
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Access can handle that analysis, as well as many others. I'm pretty sure that with experience you'll be able to do anything you need with that dataset.

Philo

Philo
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Steve's MS Office rules.

Store data in Access
Analyze it in Excel (and use Excel for non-persistent reports)
Use the data in letters and flyers using Word mail merge.

Stephen Jones
Wednesday, March 3, 2004

Scan them and paste them as jpegs into excel :-}.

(http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/434.aspx)

Aussie Mick
Wednesday, March 3, 2004