I've posted in general because I really don't know what approach is best for this requirement. I can't even come up with a meaningful, yet succinct title.
Here's the problem. I have tables:
tblApplication - defines an application (name)
tblServer - defines a server
tblInstance - defines a partition on a server (defined in above table).
tblApplicationInstance - defines a specific instance of an application on an instance on a server (i.e. ties the above three tables together)
The tblApplicationInstance table has an autogenerated ID field as primary key, and foreign keys to tblApplication and tblInstance (and thus through this to tblServer).
All well and good. Now the next table
tblApplicationUse - defines that a specific project (a foreign key to another table but I don't think it is an important factor here) is using a specific application instance over a date range.
The question. How to allow entry of new tblApplicationUse records without having to find and enter the ID from tblApplicationInstance. Rather, I want the user to specify the Application, Server and Instance, but be limited to only those that are defined.
I tried a simple query, thinking it may allow me entry, but not so. I've been building some simple forms for query parameter prompting lately but am fairly inexperienced with these. The crudest form of prompting I can think of is to simply apply a drop-down to the ID field (in tblApplicationUse) and use a multi-column format here. But it ends up very wide and is less than ideal.
Can anybody give me ideas on the 'proper' way to do this?
Here's the problem. I have tables:
tblApplication - defines an application (name)
tblServer - defines a server
tblInstance - defines a partition on a server (defined in above table).
tblApplicationInstance - defines a specific instance of an application on an instance on a server (i.e. ties the above three tables together)
The tblApplicationInstance table has an autogenerated ID field as primary key, and foreign keys to tblApplication and tblInstance (and thus through this to tblServer).
All well and good. Now the next table
tblApplicationUse - defines that a specific project (a foreign key to another table but I don't think it is an important factor here) is using a specific application instance over a date range.
The question. How to allow entry of new tblApplicationUse records without having to find and enter the ID from tblApplicationInstance. Rather, I want the user to specify the Application, Server and Instance, but be limited to only those that are defined.
I tried a simple query, thinking it may allow me entry, but not so. I've been building some simple forms for query parameter prompting lately but am fairly inexperienced with these. The crudest form of prompting I can think of is to simply apply a drop-down to the ID field (in tblApplicationUse) and use a multi-column format here. But it ends up very wide and is less than ideal.
Can anybody give me ideas on the 'proper' way to do this?
