Josh, as it happens, I'm looking for some help in that area. My adult son & I have started a small business. We dye wool yarns for knitters and other fiber workers by hand. This involves keeping track of the quantity of the commercial dyes we use to make one of our custom colors. It also involves keeping track of the quantity of those custom colors that are used in one of the variegated color yarns we make.
Several weeks ago, for the second time, I saw that our data was getting away from us, and attempted to build a db. I made an attempt to do this with OpenOffice by myself, but quickly realized how little I know as compared to what I needed to know to do any justice to the db. The only copy of MS Office I own is Office 2000.
We got a good deal of help from one gentleman, and much of the design work is done; I've entered a fair amount of data. However, his job was just ramped up, and he doesn't have the time any more to continue. The idea was to get the db working in OOo, then connect to a MySQL db somehow. I believe he preferred Access, but either doesn't have a copy of 2000, or wanted to use something newer. The MySQL work has not been started yet. If we can get it running in Access 2000, maybe the MySQL won't be required...I don't know a lot, and it's a bit confusing.
Currently, I'm completely stuck, and am not finding solutions to a couple of issues, so the db is not able to be used as intended yet. The db is relational, and so far, includes 6 tables, and 4 forms. If this interests you or another forum member, how would you like to proceed?