help with data management

[preacher]

Hi, I'm a teacher in a school for students with learning and behaviour difficulties, so the amount of students on roll is small and all core subjects are taught as the same groups.




In September we introduced a reward where the students are given up to 10 points per lesson, with 6 or above being a green (good) lesson, and 5 or below a red (bad).


We track this with a spreadsheet for each form with a sheet for each week. We had to enable sharing as people were not closing them and it was causing issues. The only problem is that now the spreadsheets are on about 14 sheets and counting and working with them is becoming increasingly slow.


I want to look at an alternative way to track the data and was thinking about a database instead. Its been years since I actually did anything other than teach the basics so Im hoping someone can answer some questions and give me some advice. It would be stored on a networked drive.



Would a database be better at handling large amounts of data as it grows?


Would it handle multiple users over a network better than excel?


Is there any way to create new records from an exported SIMS report (school database software that can export reports to spreadsheets)? I'm thinking for new starters as they seem to often arrive a load at once?


Can you do some simple maths like in excel or would I need to link a spreadsheet to the database for that function?



Any help or advice on any other potential issues would be really appreciated.

[pbaldy]

My guess is a database would be better suited to handling the data, yes.

Yes, properly set up (split into a front and back end) a database application handles multiple users quite well.

Certainly, a database can probably do much of the same math as Excel.

Start with learning normalization if you're not already familiar with it. One link among many:

Fundamentals of Relational Database Design -- r937.com