This is a browser based application tested in the following browsers Google Chrome / Microsoft Edge / IOS Safari and Internet Explorer. Interruption of connection will never cause corruption in the database although partially input or edited data may need to be re-input.

The application is hosted in Microsoft Azure with and consists principally of an ASP.Net Front end linked to a SQL Azure managed database. It should be available 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year. The database being stored in an industrial grade United Kingdom located data facility owned, operated and maintained by Microsoft. SQL Server is Microsoft’s industrial database application that for all practical uses has close to limitless scalability with close to 100% up-time. It is designed from the ground up to store information for the long term reliably with regular backups.

The application itself has no registration screen so you will need to ask your administrator to create a username and password. Along with your username you will be given a role this will determine what privileges to add edit import export or delete and some of the buttons will simply not be visible to you depending on your role. The following instructions use screenshots captured from a system administrator role and you may not have the same menu options available to you. Additionally because of the applications nature even if you have access to the same role the screenshots here may look different to those that you are viewing because your browser window has different proportions or resolution. You can see the responsive nature of the application by altering the size of the browser window.

This wordpress site will be a constantly updated reference for new and existing users alike. Articles will be indexed with a numeric and then a title. 4 digits have been chosen so that I can adjust the order appropriately. There is a powerful search option in the top right topics for new users it is broadly designed to be read in numerical order. WordPress is also responsive and you may wish to keep a link to this site on your mobile.

When you scroll down a black square with a white arrow pointing up will appear in the bottom right of your screen hitting this will take you back to the top and the menu. If you select an individual topic in the index the screen will resolve with just that topic to restore all topics hit home in the menu. This site should have infinite scroll enabled so if you are on home all articles will load as you navigate down.

There is a powerful search facility available by selecting the menu which can be used instead of the index to search for particular words or phrases.

The CASK Inventory database is arranged into primary tables and lookup tables. Primary tables hold information whereas lookup tables can hold the values that are stored in individual fields.

The main tables in this database at February 2020 are

CASK FILL – holds information pertaining to whisky in a cask

TRANSACTIONS – holds all individual transactions

PERSON – holds the attributes of individuals

ORGANISATION – holds attributes relating to separate organisations

CASK NOTES – holds notes about differing casks

CASK TRANSFER – holds notes about cask transfers

CASK SAMPLES – holds details assoiciated with sampling of tables

By referentially relating these tables and lookup tables infinite amounts of information are possible to be stored.

Using the Chrome browser navigate to the url you wish to access as an application.

In the top right you should see three dots vertically aligned – click on these to reveal the following menu.

Move the cursor down to more tools and expand the menu to the right and then select create shortcut.

You should now be presented with a something similar to the following.

In the field type something memorable and relevant to the application you are accessing and ensure the Open as window is ticked and the hit the CREATE button. In terms of CASK Inventory Database a new icon will now exist on your desktop.

Clicking on this now runs the application in a browser window with reduced boundary and an icon is placed in your system tray which will maintain separation from other browser windows.

The roles setup in the database at present are

Read Only – users can see all screens but export of information is not enabled

Read Only with export – users can see all screens and are allowed to export information to xls format for analysis

Add Edit List – users can edit most of the information that they can see and they are able to export information to xls format

System Administrator Lite – a user within this role will be able to setup new users and alter their own priveledge level. They can do pretty much everything except delete cask fills – users can also import information in this role

System Administrator – a user within this role can do everything

Custodian – a user within this role has added priviledges to create cask fills

Certificate – a user within this role can edit the Certificates list

As a new user you will have been allocated to a specific role and depending on that role some parts of the menu may not be visible to you. What you will see however should be something similar to the following. Note going from screen to screen you can always return to this screen by clicking on Lindores CASK Inventory Database text in the top left hand section of the browser window. Your username should appear in the top right. To log out move your cursor over your username and use the mouse to reveal the options one of which will be log out.

Each lookup references a table and should be identifiable in the list tables as it has a prefix of LK followed by a unique number. Information is stored in database tables as text but referenced in the drop down to these tables. Accessing the raw table through this menu allows the selected users to alter the values than can input or edited by users using the add new or edit button record buttons. To assist administrators columns that reference lookup tables are listed with their reference table number. Below is a screen shot of the of the columns that are referenced to lookups in the cask fill screen. NOTE this should not affect the import feature of the database and any values should be accepted providing they are of the correct variable type.

If we got into the cask size lookup through the sysadmin menu LK004 cask size we will see all the sizes that are available in the drop down for data entry and data edit.

This allows administrators to control what is input and facilitiates mobile input as on mobile devices a special selector modal appears on the screen or add on edit of the field listing the created options. Don’t worry about the include field at present the plan is in the future to restrict the modal to only those that are include for more rapid mobile input.

The principle behind this method of holding individual details is that the names and organisations are input first and then these are added to the cask. This is because this method references the index of the individual or person to the cask and not the text. This was designed this way as it has some the advantages that details can be cascaded to all casks when person or organisation details are updated or if an individual owns multiple casks.

The following shows the persons table shown (here for privacy I have put in my own details) normally there may be many hundreds or thousands of individuals in here.

For all individuals you wish to relate to casks enter details here. PLEASE note the Organisation field of the persons table references the organisation table and you will need to enter all required organisations before they can be selected and added to the individuals record.