Rolodex Program
 

My friend wants a program that he can use to keep track of clients. He has an ACT! database with all of them in there, but he wants something like a rolodex he can flip through. He would like each item in the rolodex to look like a business card.
I was thinking about writing this for him to learn about database programming, but I think it could be a very useful application with a little work.

If anyone would like to do this project with me, or if they have suggestions, plese reply.

Should this rolodex be standalone or internet based?

Good question... If its iternet then you get into alot harder programming than if you just had a feture that you could just add a file to it... Although an internet based rolodex would be good for a big company but I wouldn't use it for a small business (man I have horrible spelling but I make up for it with this sexy banana) :banana:

Why not? Doens't OpenOffice have some built in functionality for this type of thing? Connection to a standard database, creating forms for display and entry accordingly, then outporting to some sort of web interface?

I was tooling around in those features earlier today and it looked like it was capable of that type of thing, (if it wasn't web based it was at least console based)

-MBirchmeier

A web based contact management / address book / rolodex (pick your poision)... would be incredibly easy to create, maintain, and use via PHP and MySQL.

Yes but you could say program it in C++ and then have it connect to the server and display the information in a easy to use user interface and then you could have the feture to add a new contact right there. That way all you need to do is install the program on all of the computers that you are going to use it on and then everyone would have access to it... easy enough right?

yeah, but what happens if a user wants some contact info when they are away from their computer, or if they are in a location where they have no rights to install software?

It would be much more fool proof to make it web based....however only if it was coded in a way that was secure. Nobody like's their contact info being stollen :-P

You've raised some interesting questions. It would only be business cards that would be read and anyone can get that information if they really want to, right? And if he was only accessing one at a time, it wouldn't be too much information leaking. What does everyone else think about this?

At first, I was thinking about having this just be an intranet thing for him and his 2 office employees. I think it would be ^n times better if it were over the net though and since I'm programming it with sockets anyway...

I am biased towards using Java right now, though that could chance. Can you use JDBC for this kind of thing and can you open databases as read only? I wouldn't want to ruin the database by making rookie mistakes.

Thanks for the replies, got me thinking.

Oh ya, I was thinking about incorporating the mouse scrolling feature to move throughout the rolodex (for show factor). This made me think someone should have a password system like a safe that uses the mouse scroller.

a rolodex only sorts data though one key, alpha-order.

name, type, business, whatever...decide which you like, OR allow sorting based on multiple types. (help!?!)

i believe databases are designed to do this.

this sounds like something real easy to do with the right focus.

It would be really easy to store all of the information in a text file and then bring them to were they belong in the program using C++...