Dec. 6th, 2017

mtbc: maze H (magenta-black)
This 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,

  • 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?

I find that for each gift I am having to track at least,

  • what it is
  • given by whom
  • to whom
  • for which event
  • from which vendor
  • at what price.

Further, even a simple view of gift status has two dimensions: relating to the gift (ordered? obtained? wrapped?) and relating to payment for it (did I pay? did the giver pay me?). Even with those I still do not know with which vendors I have checked availability and prices, anything about package tracking, currency conversion, complication over the order in which gifts must be opened, etc.

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,
SELECT giver, SUM(price) FROM gifts 
    WHERE paid = 'unbilled'
    GROUP BY giver;
Being able to easily construct queries and updates turns out to be a great help.

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Mark T. B. Carroll

May 2025

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