Cookery Book Design Outline

[Graham T]

I am attempting to create an on-screen Cookery Book. From the information provided I have deduced that there will be a need to store information in four main tables relating to:

tblMeals (this will store Meal Information) and should include:

* lngMealID (Primary Key, autonumber)
* strMealName
* strMealDescription (Chinese, Thai, Indian, English etc.)
* lngMealCategoryID (Foreign Key from tblMealCategories)
* intMealPrepTime (In minutes, prep time only - for the meal)

tblMealsCategories (this will store Meal Category Descriptions) and should include:

* lngMealsCategoryID (Primary Key, autonumber)
* strMealsCategoryDescription (Vegetarian, Vegan etc.)

tblIngredients (this will store Ingredient Names) and should include:

* lngIngredientID (Primary Key, autonumber)
* strIngredientName

tblCookingMethods (this will store Cooking Methods) and should include:

* lngMethodID (Primary Key, autonumber)
* strMethodDescription (Grill, Bake, Microwave etc.)

I will then also require the use of 2 LINK tables as at present there are Many-to-Many relationships between:

tblMeals >> tblCookingMethods and
tblMeals >> tblIngredients.

The LINK tables would need to be:

tblLINKMealsMethods (this will link Meals and Methods) and should consist of:

* lngMealID (Multi Field Primary Key)
* lngMethodID (Multi Field Primary Key)
* intMealCookTime (cooking Time for the Meal and Method)
* memMealCookingInstructions (Cooking Time for the particular meal and method)

tblLINKMealsIngredients (this will link Meals and Ingredients) and should consist of:

* lngMealID (Multi Field Primary Key)
* lngIngredientID (Multi Field Primary Key)
* strUnitOfMeasure
* intQuantity

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If anybody can see any glearingly obvious mistakes I would appreiciate any comments and ideas.

TIA

Graham

 

[Alexandre]

My 2 cents:

I do not see the difference between intMealCookTime (in tblLINKMealsMethods) and intMealPrepTime (in tblMeals ). I think that if you want to store different times for different cooking method, you should stay only with intMealCookTime.

I think I can understand why you put the recipe description in the link table Meal/method, but I am wondering if this is not an overkill: won't recipes for the same meal and different methods be the same to a very large extent? I would consider letting this field in the Meals table and modify it text to talk about the possible variations in the cooking methods.

I was about to say that you could let ingredient quantities in the recipe description txt and that a separate field for quantities albeit logical would be unecessary, but if you would like to let users read the ingredient s+ quantities lists before asking for the whole recipe... that is OK
May seem a bit picky but you should consider making a lookup table also for an lngUnitOfMeasureID.

I would make a lookup table also for lngMealOriginID (that you called strMealDescription ).

What about another category for the meal type (aperitive, dessert, fish, beef, ...) ?

What about a field in tblMeals to link to and display an image file?

 

[Graham T]

Alexandre

Thanks for your 2 cents worth....

I do not see the difference between intMealCookTime (in tblLINKMealsMethods) and intMealPrepTime (in tblMeals ). I think that if you want to store different times for different cooking method, you should stay only with intMealCookTime.

The different times are for the prep times (preping the actual ingredients) and the cooking time of the actual meal.

My thinking of storing intMealCookTime in the LINKMealsMethods is that there could be different cooking times dependant on the method used (i.e difference between grilling, roasting or barbecuing a chicken dish).

I think I can understand why you put the recipe description in the link table Meal/method, but I am wondering if this is not an overkill: won't recipes for the same meal and different methods be the same to a very large extent? I would consider letting this field in the Meals table and modify it text to talk about the possible variations in the cooking methods.

The memMealCookingInstructions (I think this is what you are refering to) is there to give full instructions on the process of cooking the particular meal using the chosen method.

I will investigate this point further.

I was about to say that you could let ingredient quantities in the recipe description txt and that a separate field for quantities albeit logical would be unecessary, but if you would like to let users read the ingredient s+ quantities lists before asking for the whole recipe... that is OK

I have choosen seperate fields to store quantites to enable reports to be printed out giving full list of quantites, measurements and ingredients for a particular meal.

May seem a bit picky but you should consider making a lookup table also for an lngUnitOfMeasureID.

I would make a lookup table also for lngMealOriginID (that you called strMealDescription ).

What about another category for the meal type (aperitive, dessert, fish, beef, ...) ?

What about a field in tblMeals to link to and display an image file?

Some of the above I had already included, and the rest I agree with and will amend.

Many thanks for your input, it is appreiciated.

Graham