Or a perl, java, .NET, python, ruby, PHP user group or a Linux /BSD user group. You could take a 2-prong approach: see how far you get on your own by defining

Or a perl, java, .NET, python, ruby, PHP user group or a Linux /BSD user group. You could take a 2-prong approach: see how far you get on your own by defining the core functionality: database schema , the CRUD operations you'll be doing (transactional side) and report generation / summary tools you'll need (analytical side). Don't worry about HTML, CSS and javascript, Shoot for something that barely renders in 1 browser (opera or firefox), but you'll have to learn mySQL or postgres or SQLite reasonably well, and it'll tell you how complex the app is, roughly. Then write up a RFP describing the core functionality, something you could take to a web app developer and they could put together numbers of how many hours to produce wireframes, basic models and controllers and a first prototype. and, oh yea, do some searching on searchyc.com, reddit, techcrunch, see if somebody's done it already. This is tricky, you may go through dozens of sets of keywords.