Xcite

Greetings to all!

I’m currently attending a course in Health, Safety and Environment. Along with the normal classes, it is also required to develop a final project where one applies some of what he has learned.

I’ve noticed that in terms of auditing, the professionals that provide HSE services normally use paper checklists. So, what I was thinking was to develop the same checklists, with a database of applicable legislation and standards, but in the electronic format.

One of the objectives would be to allow for almost instant reports, including observations, either by printing them or just converting them in PDF/WORD format and sending in an e-mail.

I’ve done some research and of all the information I’ve read, the programming language of JAVA seams to be the best choice for what I have in mind.

It allows to program with a certain freedom and speed, especially if one uses Netbeans.

The other advantage is that one could construct a program that can be used in almost every single OS, be it Windows, Linux, Mobile, etc.

So, with this project in mind, I would like to ask for your opinion in the choice of the programming language.

Thanks.

jayme

If you are really aiming to only code a single program, which needs multiple OS support, java is probably the easier way for you to accomplish this.

As for speed, it would depend on how complex you're program is. Are you planning on making a program that does just a few simple tasks like connecting, printing, and observing changes in the database?

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Booooze

It seems like you have done your research. I was about to suggest Java when you mentioned it. I would use Java and Mysql. I think the only real problem would be converting to PDF/DOC, or printing. That could be tricky. I'm not sure how I would go about doing it, so I can't suggest a way to you. It depends on what you have in mind.

Xcite

From the database point a view, I haven’t really given it much thought but MySQL is probably what I’m going to use.

In terms of speed, I’ve read that JAVA tends to suffer because it requires a virtual machine to run the program we develop, but I believe that my project will “simple” enough. Its main function, for now, is to have something like 100 questions with checkboxes and a field for manual text input.

__________________________________________________________
Yes No N/A Observations
Question 1 x Complies with all standards.
Question 2 x
…
__________________________________________________________

The database itself is to be used only when the user wants to print out the report. This is because associated to each question, there is going to be some legislative support and in the report, the applicable legislation text must be present.

In terms of printing out the report, from what I could find, there is an open source solution for printing in PDF format, integrated in Netbeans, but PDF has the disadvantage of not being editable.

Printing to DOC format is a bit more complicated but I think I will save this problem for later.