Looking for help with database functions

[Byrd]

I am working with a non-profit rural community development group. We are
trying to put together a "database" to put people looking for work together
with people needing services. A sample would might be:

Joe Blow; [carpenter, woodworker]; free on tues & thur; willing to trade
(equal to $10.00 hr); References: Heidi Hoe, 555-5555, John Doh, 555-5555
ext 100

Jane Doe, needing porch repaired and general yardwork, work on your own
schedule, open to Barter; References: Seymour Johnson, 555-5555, Ivan
Tootall, 555-5555

Winnie Pooh, looking for someone to read news, books, and visit a couple of
times a month or more, You can use my dock and camp area on the lake in
trade.

Orville Wrightenbacker, Have some time on thurs to volunteer, have CNA
license, can do housecleaning for disabled or elderly. Willing to pet or
house sit in your home for extended periods. References: W. Oman 555-5555,
Simon Saez, 555-
5555

We are looking to put seekers and providers togehter on a community website,
but we would also like to set up a database to track these types of sevices
and connect seekers to providers. Does anyone have any clue about how we
could do this or templates that would work with excel or openoffice?

Thanks,
Bob

 

[Harlan Grove]

I am working with a non-profit rural community development group. We are
trying to put together a "database" to put people looking for work together
with people needing services. A sample would might be: ....
We are looking to put seekers and providers togehter on a community website,
but we would also like to set up a database to track these types of sevices
and connect seekers to providers. Does anyone have any clue about how we
could do this or templates that would work with excel or openoffice?

Joining tables is relatively simple, but it requires highly similar
field contents. Nothing in Excel or OpenOffice would be able to match
'carpenter' to 'porch repair' unless YOU build up a cross-reference
table of job seaker capabilities and job offering particulars.

I'm not aware of any templates for this sort of thing, and it'd take
some fairly sophisticated natural language programming to automate any
of this. In the short term you'll just have to maintain separate
tables for job seakers, their qualifications, availability,
compensation requests, and references on one hand and job offerers,
their particular needs, compensation offers and references on the
other. In Excel or OpenOffice Calc you could use a third table as a
cross-reference between the other two list which would contain two
column, one for row number in the job seaker table and the other for
row number in the job offerer table. But you'd need to fill out that
cross-reference table manually.