This question does not really have a right or wrong answer, but I am offering 500 points for the best presented solution.
My current application asks the user many questions, and their answers are written to an Excel spreadsheet (not my idea to use Excel, but the customer will not budge on this issue). There are 40 fields of data that is written to the spreadsheet every time the program is completed.
My current approach is that I first write the answers to a text file, and then I write the answers to the spreadsheet. When the next patient fills out the questionaire their data is appended to the text file. I exclusively write to one text file and one Excel spreadsheet, the user is NOT offered the chance to change either of these files.
The spreadsheet itself gets all of the prior information from the text file, writes that data to the spreadsheet, and then adds the latest patient information to the spreadsheet.
What I am now getting nervous about is that there are now 40 fields (the initial workstatement had 15), and now instead of hundreds of entries, the customer is saying there ultimately may be several thousand responses written to the spreadsheet. I have fought (unsuccessfully) to get them to use Access, so I really am stuck with Excel.
Given the information I have presented; I am soliciting approaches to this requirement that are time tested and are robust. I do not mind "code bloat" if it makes the program less prone to problems. The customer is overseas, and they do not have good English skills (the UI is in the native language of the customer). The reason I am explaining all of this is because if anything ever goes wrong, I must provide them with answers that are easy to understand and implement.
The more detailed the approach the better. I am stuck with my current approach for the next month, but given the escalating amount of data I will not hesitate to change approaches in my next upgrade version.
I will be more than happy to provide further detail regarding the application, so if you have questions please feel free to write them, I will respond as soon as is practical.
I want to say thanks in advance to everyone who contributes.
Scott
aka "servodude"
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