Now that we’ve gotten settled in our hotel and gotten a chance to explore the city we’re really starting to get down to business.  While we already have a list of required database fields from BTB and Texas Children’s, we still need to create the database solution we’re going to carry with us into the hospitals.  We identified three main candidates: a simple Excel spreadsheet, Microsoft Access, and Open Office Database.  Excel is the most familiar to us as students, but also offers the least power in terms of merging in new information and entering data in a reliable way.  Open Office Database and Access both work as front ends to complicated relational database tools, but have a much steeper learning curve.  Fortunately once setup, these programs allow the programmer to create easy to use forms and reports that make it really easy for the end user to work with the database.  We played around with both, and decided to use Access since it offers more powerful features than Open Office and all of the computers here are PC’s.  We can distribute the free access runtime to allow users to interact with the database on their computers without actually having to buy or install the full version of access too!  Now to actually build the database…