[mso] Re: OT: Dian please
- From: "Dian Chapman" <dian@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 10:15:44 -0500
First...it's no problem writing me directly...so we can take this offline
for further discussion. But, I'll provide info here for those who may be
curious about this stuff...
As for a course/payment...one of the things I do a lot is become an
"on-call" consultant for those who have special projects and want to learn
to do it themselves...so they hire me as a consultant to be their and give
them a priority status to their Qs and help them tackle their latest issues
while working out their project. You can easily do this by "banking" time
through my PayPal link on my Consulting page at:
www.mousetrax.com/consulting. I then set up an Extranet site for you (your
own personal, secure web page) where you can go to see exactly how much time
you have left for whatever $$ you have banked and you will also see an exact
timesheet for what I've done that has been billed/deducted from your
bank...as per your requests for coding help/explanation, etc.
Say you are working out some code and get stuck...and you've put $50 (my
training/on call rate) for 1 hour. I show you/explain how to fix your
code...and I've deducted, say, 15-20 mins time from your 1 hr bank for that
fix. If you have more issues you need to work out...you can add more $ to
the bank to continue. If anything is left...I refund it. You can continue as
long as you need. You're literally purchasing me as your private tutor...but
YOU do the work. If *I* did all the work for you...it would be $80 hr. And
you can bank it as much as you need with a credit card or electronic check.
Of course, you can also get all this learning info free on the web...it'll
just take you much longer to learn/read/understand it. After all...that's
how *I* learned all this...but it took me years to figure out all the parts
and get good at it through the experience of creating apps! It all comes
down to time vs money.
As for "my course"...I hope to put together a course with all this training
info, but don't have one available now. However, I can train you how to do
all this as an on-call consultant. I've done several custom applications
like this. I, personally, would suggest you do it in Word VBA as the front
end and link it to an Access DB. Users could fill in info easily through a
master Word template and pass the data back to the DB, while having a neat
printout in Word doc/designed format. If they needed to lookup/printout a
"report" say on Uncle Joe, they could open a neat dialog box off the master
template menu...enter Joe's name...search the DB, get the match, open his
profile (all within the Word custom dialog boxes). The dialog box could even
have tabs (pages) for say...personal info, relatives, burial details, etc.
Once the user checks off the info they'd like in the report (or do a blanket
report) they click a print button and all the DB info is put into the Word
document, at the predefined location...depending on the report you
designed...and they print it out.
If they have new info...they can either add it into the report itself or
into the dlg boxes...however they want...and when the page closes, you can
make sure to save all this info back to the DB, with just a click...so it's
always accurate.
This is a pretty common type of application that I show people how to do or
do for them. In fact, as I've said, I'm working on an elaborate one right
now. Because it deals with medical records and needs to be very secure, it's
a bit complex...having to use a lot of encryption. But the basics aren't
quite as difficult and the resulting application...built on to the back of a
master Word template with and Access DB powering the backend...can be quite
impressive and cool! (This is actually how I got STARTED doing all this 10
years ago...I first created a custom financial reporting system that
financial analysts could use to print financial reports for their clients!
Check out this link to Ibbotson Associates software and see their Portfolio
Strategist and Investment Policy Statement Guide software...I designed/built
the first versions of those both...those graphs are ones I initially slaved
over and the reporting software (done as Word reports) and they have my
blood, sweat and tears all over them!<lol> Link:)
http://www.ibbotson.com/content/product_lvl3.asp?catalog=Products&category=I
nvestment%20Planning%20Software%20and%20Data&lcategory=Software
Anyway...what you want to do sounds way cool. I did a lot of my own
genealogy and spent time in Boston with Greg going through the old
cemeteries...including the ones in Salem, MA...and it would have been very
cool to record some of that info more than on video!
To do this type of app in the way I've done them...you would need to
understand Word and understand using Styles (to make it look cool) and some
design skills. You would need to learn some basic Word VBA routines. You
would need to set up and understand how Access creates relational DBs. And
you would need to learn ADO (Active Data Object) to connect to the DB and
retrieve/manipulate RecordSets from within Word's VBA environment back to
the DB connection and on to the document (report). And you would need to
understand some SQL to be able to create the proper queries...depending on
the user's request. And finally, it would be good to have a little GUI
(graphical user interface) design experience (how to design good dialog
boxes) so you can create dlgboxes that are friendly and useable. And, of
course, you'd need to understand the basic architecture of Word and how it
works in relationship to templates/documents.
And yes, I can teach you all this...cos' it's what I do! ;-)
Feel free to contact me offline...
Note! If you have not used Word VBA before...I would first suggest you get
my Word AutoForms & Beginning VBA video course ($59.95 + S/H). It's really
good, if I do say so myself. I show you all the basics for learning VBA. All
about variables, data types, how to design good forms, things to think about
when designing forms...which you may not have thought about, but for which I
have 10 years of experience of shooting myself in the foot already, so I
teach you the RIGHT way, minus the mistakes I've already made. Then you
learn how to write code...pass info around and into docs. Deal with
fields/bookmarks. Create cool dialog boxes and much more, like tips on how
to easily get around the VB Editor to save time, etc. This course will give
you a good foothold on what you need to understand and you could move on
from there to then learn the ADO connection part. And chances are...it'll
also give you a lot of ideas about how best to set up your application by
seeing stuff I've done already.
Hope this helps...good luck!
Dian D. Chapman
Technical Consultant,
Microsoft MVP & Instructor
Free Tutorials: www.mousetrax.com/techtrax
Free Word Tips & Tricks eBook: www.mousetrax.com/books.html
Learn VBA the easy way, thru video! www.mousetrax.com/techcourses.html
-----Original Message-----
From: mso-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:mso-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Robert Carneal
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2003 11:54 PM
To: mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [mso] OT: Dian please
To the rest of us, I apologize for the off topic post. I didn't want to
email Dian directly without her permission first. Thank you for the
understanding.
Dian-
I have a project in mind- and would like to take some training to accomplish
being able to write that project on my own. May I ask this first
please:
This is a cemetery recording program. I plan to use it for my family
genealogy when I find lost cemeteries, and to also record cemeteries for
later publication. In my mind/head, I have it laid out as a relational
database.
With that in mind, is an Access course better to take than an Excel course
for this project? It will contain names of people, relationships, cemetery
names, GPS locations, and pictures; if I write what I am thinking of.
If it helps, I have training in programming in Fortan, SQL (Univac), Cobol,
Pascal, PL/1, and -some- assembler. Problem: I was trained in pre-Windows
days. I have longed wished for the ability to write Window apps for a
genealogy application. I usually end up doing it in Power Basic. I +did+
take a Microsoft Visual Basic course, and part way through the course our
professor left for Desert Storm. The school has not taught that course
since. Our local schools don't teach that, they are teaching networking,
A+, etc.
If I take the course, will you accept a certified check? That way, you won't
have to worry about whether or not "is this guy's check good?"
Robert
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