Need a little guidance to get started.

[cashflo]

First off let me say hello
My name is Josh. I hope this will be a wonderful learning experience for me.

My boss has charged me with building a DB with procedures on how to deal with mainframe batch job failures. They choose me because im the only one in the group that has touched ACCESS, which was in 2007 when i had a half semester class on it. That was the last time ive touched it so i dont remember much but i think if i can get some assistance on getting started I can go from there.

I still have my book but I just need some guidance on to get started.



Basically i need to be able to choose a type of failure via a drop down that sends me to a page that i can put procedures. Some of the procedures will have links to other procedures that need their own page.

I dont think it should be difficult but I'm at a loss on how to start. Like those math classes I got A's in that I had 6 years ago that I have no clue on what to do now.

[orange]

What's the purpose of the database? Are you trying A)to prevent failures or B) are you trying to analyze the types of failures?

If A), I'm noit sure how an Access database, or any db will help.
What kind of mainframe ?

[cashflo]

The purpose is to have a place to store procedures on different types of batch job failures and so associates have a central location to reference them. We had a global hard drive but the took it from us. We now use Knowledge Exchange which is a wikki type application but it runs crap on our PCs through IE and they wont let us use another browser.

[John_G]

Hi -

From your very brief description, I would suggest that MS Access may not be the right tool. If all you are doing is putting together a series of procedure documents, then you should consider using MS Word, with hyperlinks to navigate to the different parts of one document, or to separate documents.

By using MS Word, you can format the information to highlight really important parts, and include diagrams, which you cannot do with MS Access.

However, if there is a need to track how often failures occur, or who accesses the reference documents, then you need a database, but note that MS Access can use hyperlinks to MS Word documents, for the best of both worlds.

John