Administrative nexus for gifts
Dec. 6th, 2017 10:04 pmThis Christmas is at least as complicated as usual. I generate gift ideas for family members and organize buying and wrapping on their behalf. We also have a birthday at around this time. I want to know things like,
Sortable tables are no longer cutting it. I decided that my best chance of keeping track of all this is to fire up a database and resort to SQL. It has worked excellently: I can even create billing summaries like,
- What still needs ordering from vendor X?
- How much does gift-giver Y still owe me?
- How much have I spent on gifts from me to Z?
- what it is
- given by whom
- to whom
- for which event
- from which vendor
- at what price.
Sortable tables are no longer cutting it. I decided that my best chance of keeping track of all this is to fire up a database and resort to SQL. It has worked excellently: I can even create billing summaries like,
Being able to easily construct queries and updates turns out to be a great help.SELECT giver, SUM(price) FROM gifts WHERE paid = 'unbilled' GROUP BY giver;