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slippy

You all know what I'm doing with the herobase now, right? I'm saving it as an access database (stored online, but it's just a copy) and importing it into a google spreadsheet for viewing.

Well, due to the size of the field entries, and the size of the database itself, this is becoming seriously prohibitive. I can't automate the conversion from database format to a spreadsheet format that Google Docs and Spreadsheets uses.

The most prohibitive things are the inability to easily reference items from other tables (worksheets) and cell field length limitations.

Those two things alone mean that I have to copy the information, field by field from Access to the online spreadsheet. This is nearly as much work as building the spreadsheet in the first place.

There's the added problem that googlepages only allows me 20Meg of storage, and the full database is gonna be WAY bigger than that.

I REALLY need an alternative solution.

I need something that works like Google Docs and Spreadsheets (ie allowing sharing, collaboration, online formatted viewing and editing) but that stores the data in something akin to XML format, rather than as a spreadsheet.

This means that users of the database won't be stuck with just the options of viewing an incomplete version online or downloading the huge, complete version to their PC. A proper online database of some sort would mean that users only download what they are looking at directly, and that the database is easily searchable and editable.

If I can't come up with a solution soon, I'm probably going to end up abandoning the whole project, which would be a shame given the possibilities of the whole thing, and the amount of work I've put into it already.

Does nobody know anything about online databases? I'm not a bad programmer, so if learning a new language is required, I'm not averse to giving it a try. I just need to know what to try and where to try it.

Come on, don't let this huge project get sidelined. If you haven't got anything that can help, ask around....you must know someone who can.

slippy · Posted: Fri May 11, 2007 5:17 pm Post subject:

As an experiment, and out of sheer desperation, I'm having a go at putting a few items on Google Base to see how that works.

At the moment, I can only enter data to Google Base one item at a time - I can't make the bulk upload work for my custom reference types.

Anyway, to see whatever I've managed to fit in there, pop along to http://base.google.com/base/a/slippy.lane

Alternatively, you can try going to http://base.google.com and searching for "custom heroes" - include the quotes or you'll get loads of other unrelated results.

If I decide to go with Google Base (really not sure atm), I'll change the item types to include the word "herobase" which, at the moment doesn't elicit any response from Google Base Search.

Lemme know what you think eh?