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Need Help from Alpha Guru's

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    #1

    Need Help from Alpha Guru's

    Hello,

    Here is my situation and I need advice from all you Alpha Guru's out there. I just purchased Alpha 5 V9 and am starting to learn. I have inherited an Access Database that was created a while back that keeps track of student information for our Skills Development Grants. What I get is an Excel Spreadsheet containing new and updated info on the students (a new version each month that shows any new students, classes they took, how many hours, etc. as well as old students that might have taken or finished a course or might have been terminated, etc.). The Access database is the repository for the data, it is not relational, it is flat file. Each month, the old data is completely wiped out and the updated Excel spreadsheet is then loaded into the database. This happens each month for each of the grants (4) currently. I have attached the spreadsheet for one of the grants (dummy data inserted) so that you see what I get each month. Each grant has a unique number that is associated with that grant and that grant alone. So, each month I go in and wipe out the data from the previous month and then load from the Excel spreadsheet current and updated info.

    So, to my question, what would be the best way for me to do things in Alpha 5 instead of Access, I would love just to load the database once with all the data for all the grants and when I receive a new spreadsheet with new and updated data, just be able to append or update what is already there.

    I know this is long, but is it worth doing in Alpha or just keep on doing what I am doing with the Access database I have.

    Thanks,

    Ben
    Tags: None
    #2
    Re: Need Help from Alpha Guru's

    You could have two tables in Alpha related in a 1:M set. Grants would be the parent table and students would be the child table. You could run an import and append operation to add the new records. The trick is that you need to "append" to each imported record the related grant_Id. This is basic stuff in Alpha, but someone here should be able to help get you through that, as I'm a little short on time (sorry).
    Last edited by Peter.Greulich; 07-06-2009, 10:30 AM. Reason: sp
    Peter
    AlphaBase Solutions, LLC

     [email protected]
    https://www.alphabasesolutions.com

    Comment

      #3
      Re: Need Help from Alpha Guru's

      Thank you Peter for your suggestion.

      Ben

      Comment

        #4
        Re: Need Help from Alpha Guru's

        I forgot to add that we also have to track which classes a student has per his/her job description, i.e., Truck Driver may need to take NEO (New Employee Orientation), Word I & Word II, etc. while a different employee might only have to take 2 classes (Financial I & Customer Service). We do know which Jobs need to take which classes for the grant. Once an employee has completed all their training (all classes they were supposed to take) and have remained employed by the company for at least 90 days post last class taken, then they are considered a completer with a status code of 20 and the company gets some money back from the college for that student.

        Would I need multiple tables?

        Thanks,

        Ben

        Comment

          #5
          Re: Need Help from Alpha Guru's

          I would think you would need another table for job description and classes required. This way, when you enter a class for a particular student, you would have a standard to check against.

          Tom

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            #6
            Re: Need Help from Alpha Guru's

            Thanks so much Tom, you are right, this way I can cross check the classes and the class hours with what they have done so we can catch shortages. Most of these grants are only 1 year long, but it is very intensive with training, usually we have to train between 500 and 1,000 people for a company which might range from 1 - 10 different courses per person. The way it is now, it is really a nightmare to try and write any truly usable reports. Currently each grant is going into its own table with custom reports developed for each grant. When I get some experience under my belt with Alpha 5, I would really love to be able to put up a Dashboard for the Director to pull up and see via meters just where we stand on each open grant. Lots to do and so little time ...

            I want to thank everyone for being so kind here, I'm a newbie here and from what I have seen this is really a First Rate place.

            Thanks to everyone that has responded so far ... I'm attaching a data model that I was starting to develop towards the end of last year in the hopes of completely redoing the entire database. This is before I found Alpha, if some of you Guru's can take a look and let me know if I'm making this overly difficult for creation in Alpha 5. I was designing this for MS Access 2007.

            Thanks,

            Ben

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