[MLUG] plans for a small business

[Mike Miller <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

My wife works at a small nonprofit business (they assist sick people with 
community living) where about 10 employees will need to enter data into a 
database than can then be used to update various forms and be used by the 
accountant for various purposes.  Right now the employees use MS-Word and 
MS-Excel for various tasks, but almost all of their data are on paper. 
They want to be able to do the following:

(1) Buy a server that can be connected to remotely.

(2) Create a relational database with multiple tables and store it on the 
server.

(3) Use forms to update the database.

(4) Allow employees to update the database remotely from laptops.

(5) Maintain security of the server and database -- only encrypted 
connections to the database are allowed.

(6) Be able to extract information from the database to automatically 
generate formatted reports of various kinds.

(7) Be able to move data from some of the tables to Intuit QuickBooks 
(because the accountant knows how to use that).


They want to write a grant to get money to hire someone to get this 
working for them and to maintain it.

What are your opinions on how this can be done?  I would love to see them 
go with FOSS and Linux, but I'm not sure how much training that will 
require and what they will be able to do with it.  I can see how Microsoft 
Access and Office Suite would work for them, but with that solution I'm 
not sure about #5 - encryption and security.

Mike

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