Background
            Firefighters Safety Association (FSA) is a nonprofit organization founded by firefighters for firefighters and, in addition to firefighter members, includes emergency medical technicians. FSA has two initial underlying goals: first, provide line-of-duty death benefits to families of fallen firemen for a reasonable annual membership fee; second, promote safety within the ranks of all firefighting personnel. FSA is a new organization, but needs a database to administer member needs and growth of the Association.

Project Description
 

• Develop new database application for potentially large membership organization, including members, fire departments, member representatives, and death benefits.
• For user demand, I chose Visual Basic 6 as project language and MS Access for creation of database tables.
• For report generation, I used Crystal Reports Software.
• Client required user friendly application, including search feature and automatic report generation.

Project Development
            The project can be broken down into two main phases. First, I had to understand the organization, how it gathered information, and planning the structure of the database required by the client. Additionally, I had to deal with a lot of changes demanded by the user. Principal among them was a language change. I started in Java but the client wanted Visual Basic because of perceived ease of maintenance. The second phase of the Project involved programming for a practical, easy-to-use database that will be working every day. I experienced my biggest problems with trouble shooting and working with the user to create the rapid prototype.

In Conclusion
            I was proud to be part of FSA's interesting and obviously necessary database project. I hope to continue to work with them as the organization grows. In the end, I completed my project and satisfied the fundamental database needs of a client who will use my software on a daily basis to serve its members. I learned a new language and other software that was used in the project. In summary the project was very valuable for my education and gave me first hand experience with a real client's database problems.