[AccessD] Web based Data Acquisition Application.

DWUTKA at marlow.com DWUTKA at marlow.com
Fri Feb 25 17:20:10 CST 2005


Okay, this isn't a technical question, it's more like a marketing one.  My
company is a manufacturing company, which has several 'test machines' which
are basically computers hooked up (through engineering cards) to test
equipment.  Most of these systems have custom built 'test software'.  I've
been here for five years, and I have yet to find the software engineer who
actually knows his left from his right in a database.  The databases they
are dumping data into are horribly designed.  For example, we have a few 'EZ
Testers', which dump their data into one database, in fact, ONE TABLE in
that database.  This table has over a hundred fields.  Each product that is
tested, and each test, use only certain fields, so there is a lot of wasted
space, and even worse, the searching of this database is a virtual
nightmare.  A few years ago, we bought a CMM machine, it's a visual
inspection machine (pretty slick, measures things with a digital camera).
It came with it's own program, which has a GUI that 'writes' QVScript (which
is essentially VB Script, just with it's own object model, and a few other
quirks.  It has no default data capture system (other then to the screen),
so I was asked to capture the data.  I wrote a very specialized .dll, that
QVBasic could use to dump it's data into an Access database.  Worked fine.
They only needed two types of 'data dumps', so I wrote two versions of the
.dll.  Quick, fast, took me no more then an hour or two to whip up the
.dll's.

Now a few months ago, we bought a second CMM.  This one was going to test a
lot more then 2 different things, so it needed to be flexible.  I also
figured that since this was going to be my second 'test machine' database, I
figured I might as well prepare for the future, and create a completely
generic data acquisition system.  Which I did, sort of.  I have the data
acquisition part done, but haven't completed the reporting capability.  In a
month or so, I will finally be able to start actually developing again
(right now, I'm too busy being a Network Admin, and PC tech! LOL).  My first
project is going to be to finish the data acquisition program.  So here's my
question.  Does anyone know if this kind of thing would have a market for
it, and if so, are their competing products, and what do they cost?

Drew



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