We need a database at our flexible packaging plant, would MySQL work for us?
Posted by: James Endl
Date: May 15, 2014 12:53PM

I currently work as a lab tech in a flexible packaging environment. We're running into an issue with our past history of test data that we feel a database will address directly and help speed up our R&D process substantially.

Our main issue is when engineers will develop a structure for a customer. The test rolls will get submitted to my lab for analysis and we then email that data back to the engineer for review. After a multitude of years, if the engineer wants to look up specific data on a structure, he has to sift through years and years of email to (hopefully) find the info that we gave them.

This is where I come in. I'm pretty tech savvy. I've ran a few servers from home, toyed around with linux etc. I approached our VP of engineering with the idea of a web-based tool that could be accessible from outside of our intranet by all of our engineers. Be it, on location at a plant, at home etc.

The data would be populated by us techs in the lab based on certain parameters that were tested. For instance, if we're testing a trial structure for a customer and our main concern is film strength. We could put together 10 different structures and test them all. We would then enter that data into our database, based on the customer, specific films used, and film strength, while leaving all other columns blank if no test data was present.

Down the road, a future engineer could be talking to a potential customer that needs a film with X/Y properties, one of which is film strength greater than X amount. He could then query the database for all film structures with destruct force greater than X amount. I would then want the database to return which of those 10 structures had a destruct force greater than X.

Obviously, this is a VERY small sample of what we would want our database to do, as we're testing just about every aspect of the film that's physically possible. We need a tool to store all of our test data that is searchable for all the categories. Possibly web based for ease of access. Would MySQL accomplish this well? Our major concern would be cost, which up front would be the cost of sending hopefully myself to classes to learn MySQL, but down the road costs would be minimal once the system is up and running.

What do you guys think?

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We need a database at our flexible packaging plant, would MySQL work for us?
May 15, 2014 12:53PM


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