Hi everyone, first of all, nice site, my regards to the admins.

Now, my problem: I work for a company that manufactures an industrial product composed of several modules (both software and hardware), and I need to develop a database to manage the compatibility issues between these modules.

For example, a customer has one of our products that he purchased a few years back, he needs to change an electronic board in it, and he wants to know if the new one he has on the shelf is compatible with all the elements in his system.

Of course, we would prefer if he could interrogate a database by connecting to our secure website hosted on a domino server through a web browser !

I have very little culture in database design and development, so any help is welcome.

Thanks to you all in advance.
CroC.

How do you know that two modules are not compatible?
Wouldn't it be simpler to keep a database of modules that are NOT compatible, than those that are compatible?
Presumably, most modules would be compatible, right?

First of all, Thanks blindman for your response.

You make a very good point about that database: its purpose is to basically list all the possible incompatibilities between modules.

As far as how we know what is incompatible with what, it is determined by the design group of any given module. It would be their responsibility to add entries in the database as they release new versions of modules.

What I need to do is basically create a design and implement the tools to easily add entries and make queries onto the database.

That's the part I need some guidance for. I've been looking into mySQL and PHP, but I'm not yet sure that this is a good fit for what I need, I still don't understand this deeply enough.

Thanks,
CroC.

Create table Modules (ModuleID, ModuleName....)
Create table Incompatibilities (ModuleID, IncompatibleModuleID)