Creating a Galactic Trade Network Database

[spreadred]

Coming from a WoW and EVE background, I found myself a little disappointed with the lack of information pertaining to pricing and trends on the Galactic Trade Network. In order to somewhat remedy this, I have began to keep track of what items I have sold, the date and the price. I was thinking about writing a program that would allow users to enter their individual sales, throw this information into a database and then show some statistics, reports, graphs, trends, etc.

 

Obviously without any API, this information can not be pulled straight from the game and must be manually entered by players. Although this is less than ideal, I am confident that creating a program to allow entries would make things much easier on a lot of users. I (and I assume, others) have been keeping track of this information in spreadsheet programs like Excel and using it to manipulate the data and generate reports. While this is effective and fairly efficient, I believe such skills might be beyond the grasp of many other players.

 

I will be moving forward with this app for personal use regardless of whether there is support in the user community, however, I thought that since I am currently in the planning phase of development, I would reach out to the community at large for suggestions/features that I might incorporate into the program.

 

This project's main focus is to be data processing and visualization for the Galactic Trade Network. Therefore, suggestions/features that are not related to this central idea will not be particularly helpful and I would ask that you refrain from such suggestions. Examples of this would be integrating a skill calculator or some such other functionality which is already provided by other applications.

 

I have yet to determine which language the application will be coded in. Obviously it will be written in a graphical language supported by Windows. Currently I am leaning towards Java because I am familiar with it and it is also cross-platform. The app should then be able to run on any device that supports java: windows, *nix, android, etc.

 

I have also considered doing this as a web service, but the possibility for abuse seems extremely high and mitigating that might not be worth the convenience and portability of the web.

 

Any constructive suggestions would be helpful. In addition to that, I would thoroughly appreciate if anyone who is currently keeping a database of their auctions would forward those over to me to get an idea of what information people are keeping track of and also to use in testing.

 

In addition to positing in this thread, people can feel free to contact me directly at rohn.adams@gmail.com