well, i'd say Access is the place to house, organize, update, and analyze
the data - but it doesn't sound like a trivial undertaking. how comfortable
are you with the Access software? and how familiar are you with the concepts
of data modeling/normalization/table relationships? if your answer to the
second question is "not very" or "not at all", then i recommend you start
there. this is definitely not a project that you want to throw together
willy-nilly, especially since you want to use the data to project future
business needs.

to learn relational data modeling methodology and the principles of
normalization, an excellent text is Database Design for Mere Mortals by
Michael Hernandez. there are also a number of links to helpful material at
http://home.bendbroadband.com/conrad...resources.html
beginning with the Database Design 101 and Starting Out links.

hth


"BMB" wrote in message
...
I have recently had a large amount of data dumped on me and was asked to
organize it. If the data were finite, it wouldn't be a problem; but it is
subject to weekly updates with new records being added. This might take
some
explaining. . .

I work in a university program office and am trying to figure out the best
way to keep up with which students are in which degree concentrations,
each
of which has its own set of requisite courses. For example, there are 5
different degree concentrations with the program; one has only 6 required
courses, one has 16. I have projected dates that students anticipate
taking
the courses that are required for them (e.g., "Spring, 2007").

Keeping up with the basic data (name, address, phone, program, etc.) is
fairly simple. I have it set up in Access and Excel. But what I want is
some kind of smart form that will know which classes are required of which
students based on their concentrations and can create detailed reports
showing how many students are projected to take each class during upcoming
semesters.

Does this make sense to anyone? I'm looking at it and still not sure what
to do. Any help with deciding which application (and how) to use would be
most appreciated.