Making a simple searchable directory of people and their skills in a day - Which technologies?

Question

Hi All,

I am working with a small theatre company. Currently they have a list of people on paper with notes about their skills next to each one. I want to create a database / directory for them so that they can add, delete, update and search for people. It is a very simple and common scenario I know but the issue here is that I only have a day to build a working solution.

The search has to be very simple

At first I was thinking LAMP but I'd rather not have to create it all from scratch and host it myself. That lead me to Google Spreadsheet as a database, this has the advantage that they already use google docs for everything and if my front end goes tits up they can still get to the data.

Presuming none of you can think of some existing software which does exactly what I want the next step is to make a front end for the database. You can create forms for Google Spreadsheets but they only let you add new entries, I can make a Google Gadget but that will only let me implement the search as the Google Visualisation API provides read only access.

It's at this point I'm stuck, should I just create a Java Servlet front end for the Google Spreadsheet and use the Java API to add, search and update?

I know this is a broad question but I'm just asking 'What would you do?' to implement this system with a day's development time?

Gav

Answer 1

I wanted to create an application about as simple as the one you described and chose Grails to implement it. With a bit of luck (and no authentication, design tweaks etc.), you should be able to fit it within a day, especially following the examples (parts one, two and three) very relevant to your use case.

Answer 2

If you have only a day to create an application like this, then there is only one answer - use the technology that you are most familiar with, which will do the job, and is within the price range of the customer (for a small theatre company that's probably $0). Any productivity gains from choosing the 'best' technology will be lost as you get up to speed on it. In this case 'the best' is the enemy of 'the good'.

Answer 3

Does the solution have to be browser based? If not, I'd look at some simple DBMS, either MS Access if it's on their computers, or one of the many barely-capable $50 databases running around the marketplace.

If it has to be browser based, use the database-aware framework closest to what you know already. You could easily implement this in Django, for instance, in the time alloted. I mention Django as an example only since it's closest to my existing skill set, you may well choose something else.