Does anyone have any suggestions/ideas about how to build a support roster
database?

We have a rotational on-call schedule, along with a rotational first shift
schedule, and want to display this information on our intranet site. I had a
database designed for this, but updating and maintaining the database is very,
very convoluted.

The on-call person rotates every week to a new person, as does the first
shift. The current database reflects the schedule by week of the year. For
example:
Week 1, John Doe has the pager
Week 2, Jane Doe has the pager
Week 3, John Smith has the pager
Week 4, John Doe again
Week 5, Jane Doe again
and so on, so forth.

The page to update this list is a form/table with one row for every week of
the year. Within each row is a column for the week name and a column with a
SELECT box with each employee's name. To update/maintain/load the schedule,
the user has to select the employee's name for the corresponding week number.
This has to be done for each week of the year.

The database has a column for week number and a column for the userID of the
employee, which is filled in from the form described above.

It works. However, aside from being an eye-sore, it is a real pain in the
butt to operate. The schedule is pretty well defined where each person gets
the pager for one week, every 4th week. However, the person may need to change
their schedule with someone, to accomodate a vacation, jury duty, military
leave, etc.

I wanted to stay away from a bulky calendar-style database, but it seems that
is my only option. Can anyone suggest anything that may work, before I resort
to building a huge database with dates and names?

Thank you in advance for your help!