DATABASE PROGRAMMING ART & MUSIC Poetry/Books Music Art ARTICLES Family/Love Philosophy BUSINESS Database Design Articles/Content Website Design LINKS Favorite Art Links Featured Artists JOKES & 'TOONS		The first job I ever had was in an accounting department and I just continued on learning all about accounting. About halfway through my accounting career, I began to consult and pretty soon I had my own accounting business for small businesses. I was totally thrilled with personal computers and got on board the computerized accounting wagon just as fast as I could. Computers are so much better and faster at handling huge amounts of calculations and sorting information. Naturally, my services expanded to include setting up business accounting systems and I learned many different programs. Keeping on this track I ended up learning spreadsheet and database programming so I could customize my own business and my client's businesses. About five years ago I set out in earnest to master database programming. I actually started off with a little program called Alpha 4. My first project was a little database that kept track of customer receipts for a travel agency. Its no longer in production, but it did work. I've written several programs now, which are currently in production: Electrical Contractor Job Management System: I wrote this in Alpha Five. It tracks electrical contracts and service calls labor and materials, produces lump sum, time and material and menu type proposals. These are updated to contracts upon acceptance. It has an entire invoicing system, which ties into the job costing module. It tracks time sheets for labor costing and for producing payroll information. Information Manager: I wrote this group of programs in MS Access. It manages contact, credit card, books, filing system, and many other file system information. Its still in use. This program is really several programs combined into an integrated package. Private School Finance System: This is also written in MS Access. It manages the school's mailing list, sponsor list and student listings. It produces automated monthly tuition billings and statements, tracks tuition contract information. Income is allocated into the school's various funds and moneys spent from each fund is separately tracked. It is also a check writer and accounts payable manager with purchase orders and disbursement vouchers. It generates a tremendous number of reports for statistical tracking purposes and for presentations to the board of directors of the school. EFT Service Bureau Prototype: This one manages multi-client EFT transactions. EFT stands for Electronic Funds Transfers. This program is written in MS Access 2000. On this system, the client's customers are set up to have their bank accounts automatically debited for their recurring payments to the client. The prototype is currently in production and I am currently working on the fully automated final version of it, which will be web-enabled in addition to the standard off-line production mode. The final version makes extensive use of Visual Basic and is fully automated, with extensive system and error management functions. On all of the above programs, I designed the systems from the ground up, including systems analysis and design and all of the accompanying production flow charting and policy implementation. I also wrote comprehensive instruction and technical manuals for all except the last one. I find that I have quite an advantage in database design and programming because of my years and years of accounting for all kinds of different small businesses. In addition to the database programs I have written I have written lots of spreadsheet applications and have worked with dozens of different accounting and check writer programs, either directly doing the work, setting them up or debugging/consulting on them. I know what is critical and important and I know how to organize for greatest working efficiency. Since I have been an employee, an executive and a business owner, I know what the data entry personnel need and I also understand the needs of management. If its to do with money or accounting, I really understand it and have probably encountered it somewhere along my travels in my accounting career. I thoroughly enjoy designing systems and databases - it really appeals to my sense of order. As far as programming goes - I get to satisfy my urge to have things "just so" - programming is so very organized and its fun to manipulate all those numbers. Last year I decided that I should add web programming to my skills. Since I already know visual basic and database programming, I'll be moving down the ASP skill path (Microsoft's Active Server Pages) so I can write database enabled web pages and programs. Looks good to me. Right now I'm learning the ins and outs of HTML - that's one of the reasons for this web-site - its my practice site. As time goes on I'll be adding all kinds of things to it as I learn more and more web-related programming skills.
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