DB Normalization Problem (1 Viewer)

[tedekgb]

Hi guys

Great Forum. I need a shove in the right direction. Hope this makes sense...

I've got a db that stores information on Bids and Contracts. There are 4 tables.

tblBid - stores info on the logistics of the bid
tblCustomerBid - linked to the Bid table. this stores monetary info by department. One bid can have more than one customer. One of the customer bids is eventually chosen and their bid becomes a contract.

tblContract - stores info on the Contract process, such as phone numbers and addresses.
tblChangeOrder - linked to the Contract table. stores monetary info by department. one contract can have more than one Change Order(a change order occurs when there's a departmental budget change)

OK. My problem is that I need to get the info from the Bid/Customer part of the database to the Contract/ChangeOrder part, in particular the monetary info. The department dollar totals from the chosen Customer bid from the customer table becomes the first record in the ChangeOrder table, and then the Change order process goes on from there.

Seems like I'm going about this in the wrong manner. Wouldn't copying the info break all kinds of normalization rules??

Any advice is greatly appreciated

Ted

 

[Peter D]

No, it won't break any rules. You are dealing with two different attributes of different elements.

One is your customer's bid dollar amount, and the other is the contract dollar amount (if I understand your situation correctly). Even though they are both dollar amounts they have different meanings and are used differently. You don't want the contract dollar amount to change when you change the customer bid dollar amount, right? So you need to copy the bid amount to the contract

Hope this helps,

 

[tedekgb]

Thanks a lot Peter. That makes me feel better

Is there a preferred method of copying data from one table to another?