Visual C++ application as a frontend to MS Access database - multiuser data access and canvas-like GUI questions

Question

In company that I work for, I was given the opportunity to write an application, which would replace the old Excel workbook, which is used to plan the production queue. Because VBA was simple and Excel was easy to use, for few years this workbook was used by several people to plan/add changes/notes about current production status. Whole workbook has few feature's (additional information about products are stored in different sheets, etc), but is lacking many more.

I sketched how it looks like (I recreated it from memory, simplified the layout, so it can be readable):

This is only a sketch, but the original one is as ugly, impractical and limited as this one.

I was hoping to create simple forms based application, which could be used by at least a few people simultaneously (each one having his own copy, though all copies would use single MS Access database for storing information).

What do I need to know about if I plan to accomplish this? What are the guidelines for creating multiuser applications?

I would also want to know if is there any way to recreate a similar layout using one of free/included .NET controls? Labels and alike are not the problem, but people need to move those colorful bars easily as well as add new ones in as easy as possible. I know that canvas-like controls exist in other languages and I was thinking about using one here. Is this a good choice or is there another, better one?

Answer 1

The DevExpress Winforms Scheduler isn't free - but looks like it would do pretty much everything you need. Using a component such as this (there are others) would most likely be less expensive for your organisation than creating one from scratch: plus I've found the DevExpress fellows to give top-notch support and help.

Although their samples are oriented mostly towards C# and VB.NET, this would work just fine from Managed C++.

As others have stated, avoid Access for data storage. If this is a single-user system you may want to consider simple XML, or if a relational database is required database engines such as MySQL or SQL Server would definitely be a better bet.