[Osc-developer] Event Database

[David M. <re...@go...>]

Hello.

I've been corresponding with Steve about starting with OSC as a user and 
tinkerer. I figured I could start bothering more people than just him.

Just kidding, I hope to have a positive impact on this great piece of 
Open Source software. Keep in mind, that while I am seeking to use this 
specifically with my church, I also am aware of the need to keep the 
basic programming generic so it can be used by other organizations.

I would like to propose an idea for an event table within OSC. Here are 
a few ways it can benefit OSC.

I am a Pastor of a United Methodist Church and the General church just 
instituted some new standards for membership record-keeping. Part of 
that is the tracking of different dates: Birth, marriage, baptism, 
profession of faith, Transfer to another church, removal of membership, 
death, etc. They also want to track other important events in a person's 
life for passing on of information to other pastors who serve a church.
And it seems to me that instead of simply adding more fields to the 
person's record, to have a separate table for all event types (like osc 
now has for property types with the addition of a date field)

Another use for it that I am interested in is the addition of a 
visitation/contact module. This would track when I have made visits to 
people and would also keep track of when I need to visit/contact someone 
again. By having an event table, I can track when I visited who and what 
came of it, as well as see who I need to see in a week.

I have a few other things that I have been writing down as I have been 
importing and then cleaning up the data from my churches (my smaller one 
is a testbed before I do my larger one) I wanted to get some feedback on 
this since it involves a bit of a bigger change than simply fixing a bug 
here or there.

David
-- 
Rev. David Morris
http://www.gomorris.net/wp/index.php
United Methodist Church, Dayton and Harcourt, Iowa
http://www.daytonharcourtumc.org
IEC, EF Foundation for Foreign Study
http://www.effoundation.org