I am the only programmer where I work (summer job) and I am a student with only a few years of programming experience. So I was asked to build a database and I am very excited about this project because hopefully I can learn a lot from this.

Using this database my manager is supposed to be able to assign work (dealing with businesses) to different people within the company using an interface (all workers have a shared drive). When workers are done with that paperwork related to the business, they can check off that its done, add comments at the bottom of the interface, and then move on to the next business. The only experience I've had with databases is some querying with SQL, and I've built GUI interfaces with JAVA. The information on the interface will be populated from Excel so workers know what businesses they are dealing with.

I've done some research and I believe the best way to build this would be building a GUI using Microsoft Visual Studio (Visual Basic) first, then figuring out a way to populate the Interface from Excel. Also because the data is pretty straight forward and not complicated I will be using MS Access to store and track the database. I know this won't be easy, but for all you geniuses out there, is this on the right path? Thanks.