Submission + - Open source data entry and reporting tools?
imrec writes: I'm an engineer in a manufacturing plant with a little over 200 folks locally. I've watched in horror as my company has beaten it's head against the wall trying to organize it's intellectual assets. We have the worst case of "spreadsheet syndrome" I have ever seen! So bad, that I fear for the very future of my workplace (not to mention, my sanity). Though my background is mechanical, I've managed to muddle through setting up some blogs, forums, a wiki, and a custom app or two on a WAMP in between keeping up my primary job function (process support, construction, yada, yada, yada...). It seems my consistent (and likely annoying) guerrilla marketing has started to pay off. These simple tools are becoming established as important in day-to-day operations and the wiki may be starting to snowball (finally).
While this is great for communication, it's time to address two more critical needs. Capturing the huge amount of data currently logged into endless spreadsheets clogging the inboxen of my coworkers, and a way to report it via browser. I hesitate to start this bit from scratch as it would become a full-time job (boss would catch on). I am overwhelmed by the number of packages out there, not knowing where to start! Our existing under-utilized data input and reporting suite is abysmal (which is why it's underused) but for being stored on a SQL server (thankfully).
And so, my question. What is a popular choice for data entry? Something that would provide validation checks and email notification on unusual entries? How about for generating reports? Something that could query multiple databases and generate charts and the like (the Google chart API is snazzy, but this system would need to be standalone and ideally, not too complicated).
What does you guys use for this?
While this is great for communication, it's time to address two more critical needs. Capturing the huge amount of data currently logged into endless spreadsheets clogging the inboxen of my coworkers, and a way to report it via browser. I hesitate to start this bit from scratch as it would become a full-time job (boss would catch on). I am overwhelmed by the number of packages out there, not knowing where to start! Our existing under-utilized data input and reporting suite is abysmal (which is why it's underused) but for being stored on a SQL server (thankfully).
And so, my question. What is a popular choice for data entry? Something that would provide validation checks and email notification on unusual entries? How about for generating reports? Something that could query multiple databases and generate charts and the like (the Google chart API is snazzy, but this system would need to be standalone and ideally, not too complicated).
What does you guys use for this?
