Salakhetdinov Shamil
mcp2004 at mail.ru
Tue Jan 14 06:41:10 CST 2014
Hi Darryl -- Thank you for your detailed reply. It's very interesting. As I have got already noted in my reply to Martin in this thread, I have got purchased Office 365 developer subscription. And I'll be studying the basics of Office365/SharePoint development options applicable/deployable/affordable first of all for SMB customers. I plan to come back to this thread with some more questions. -- Shamil Monday, January 13, 2014 10:32 PM UTC from Darryl Collins <darryl at whittleconsulting.com.au>: >Hi Shamil, > >Heh, as an old school database dude I was nervous about using sharepoint lists at first; 'Lists?? Ya kidding me!', and they do have their limitations. But for her business and needs it has been painless and we have had no issues. We do not use an 3rd party front end or interface - it is all browser based via views we have set up. Views are just like SQL Server Views (or MS Access Queries) which present a subset of the whole data based on whatever criteria you choose). > >For example, we have views for >Current Clients >Waiting List >By Therapist >Etc.. > >That are all driven from the 'Client' List. > >The users have a choice of UI as well (Form, Speadsheet, List) which is a nice touch as they can choose the UI that works best for them or the device they are using. > >Luckily for me her database needs are fairly simple and the lists can be clever and you can do many of the same design as you would in Excel or Access. For example, restrict specific fields using dropdown combo-boxes based on other hidden lists in sharepoint, or only allowing certain users to have access to specific parts of the data etc. > >So the data can be normalised and hold integrity if you set it up correctly. I can imagine it could also be a big mess, but you get that will Access and Excel as well. Sharepoint is much more like a database than a spreadsheet and I find it easy to setup the limits and rules for the data fields - clearly an understanding of data normalisation is going to help a lot here. > >The form UIs are pretty much ready-made and you only need to do minor adjustments, if at all. This 'minimal maintenance' is great (especially as I am the 'tech support' for her business in an unpaid capacity). If a change is needed I can log in via any web browser, make the change, and it is applied immediately. Much better than having to log onto a Remote Server somewhere and hack away. > >I am lucky as I already a solid understanding of how to work with data in a structured way, and I had used sharepoint in the past in a previous role so it wasn't totally foreign to me either. > >Previously for their data they used many different lists (Mainly spreadsheet or MS Access based - but some were on paper!). You know, the usual sort of thing. A list for the 'waiting list' and list for this and list for that, so there was a lot of duplication and errors (this is all very typical of many organisations, large and small, and I am sure all of you have seen this sort of thing before). > >Loading the data into Sharepoint was a breeze once I got it set it. Initially put it all into Excel, Normalised it, made dummy tables in Access and then uploaded into individual Sharepoint lists. Once is sharepoint it was just a matter of hooking the lists together logically (where applicable). > >The advantage for her for using sharepoint is it is really simple to use and understand, at least compared to writing a database from scratch - Monica even gets in there now and creates her own views on the data. A big selling point is they can access it via any web browser on any device, and although it does work best with IE - it does work on anything. The business has x percent of the client visits offsite (mainly schools and home visits) and sharepoint / onenote etc allow the therapists to update the data onsite which is then immediately available to the rest of the team. > >" In this case is there a limitation on the size of the data stored in one SharePoint list item?" - I believe it is 50 MB, we have never hit it, although it looks like there are some tweaks to increase that if you want ><< http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bgeoffro/archive/2008/03/19/list-attachments-over-50mb-need-more-than-an-increase-in-maximum-upload-size.aspx>> > > >It might not work for everyone, but it has worked really well for her. > >Cheers >Darryl <<< message tail trimmed>>> >