It's a Two-Fer: Object Names and "To Link or Not to Link"

[cheuschober]

Hey hey--

So, in my 'yout I made some silly choices with the object names of my database -- spaces and the lack of a standardized notation such as 'frm' before the various queries, reports, tables, forms, etc.

Of course, as I've read more and more I've understood that such good standards exist and for a reason, but for the life of me, I can't seem to find any quick way to fix them all without basically causing a humongous deconstruction of my albeit, reasonably large database here. Are there any automated procedures to help this standardization process?

No. 2, deals with design. Basically, I have a database going that will be used for actors (who have surprisingly odd tax deductions) to take care of their finances. Expense logs, income logs, deductions summaries, etc. Additionally I'm creating an additional side to this database for important business information to be kept, like agents, auditions, contacts, material, etc. Each of these sides of the same coin will be fairly huge in their own right as they could easily have 30 years worth of data entered into them and only portions of the financial side of it can be cleared.

I had originally planned to separate these into two distinctive databases, however, they meet in one place--income. Income needs to record the employer and all of the multiple tables worth of data associated with employers, which is considered a 'business contact' in the 'Actor's Resource' side of this system

My question is whether or not it would behoove me to combine these into database or, was the rumour I heard true--that the system will work much more efficiently if these larger (65+ tables each) systems are separated and linked? Particularly, I would love to have one switchboard be able to open one or the other, but I don't know what the limits are.

Keep in mind, of course, this is for cheap home-computer use not work-horse. No user can be expected to have much more than a pIII with 128mb of pc133.

Thanks for the help,
~Chad

 

[Crilen007]

Hi, I would hire someone for this if you want it done right without messing around. or take a course/read some books if you have the time.

 

[cheuschober]

Hi, I would hire someone for this if you want it done right without messing around. or take a course/read some books if you have the time.

I actually have the bones model of the system completely up and running--it's taken a good 2 months or so to teach myself access as I've done it, but all seems well. That's actually why I'm so feign to just destroy it for standardization purposes. The place I'm at now is actually the last step with some vba for a more automated system--but all the other pieces are already up and working and have been beta-tested to full success. That's why I'd like to stardardize, to just basically clean it up and why I'm asking what is going to be the most efficient way to hold the data as it inevitably grows.

~Chad

 

[cheuschober]

Thank you very much Pat! As I've worked on it and thought on it for the last 24 hours I've actually decided that I would do myself a favor if I simply re-worked this from the ground up. It will basically give me a chance to go through and clean up those items I had originally thought were 'good ideas' so a few more tables will be split, etc.

I love the idea on keeping all of the tables in one db while the distinctive applications run off of separate db's. I'm definately going to consider that as I plan my restructuring.

As for the number of tables... well, you just wouldn't believe JUST how much information we have to keep track of and how much of it has multiple uses across the system. There are HUGE amounts of many to many relationships especially on the 'actors resource' side of it and as such, quite a few tables merely serving that purpose. I've checked for normalization, however. And, a few portions of this restructuring is to ferret out one or two pieces of repeated data or reduce a value list to a lookup, etc.

As I've been building this, intially just for myself, friends have become so interested that everyone wants a copy for themselves so many things need to be more flexible.

Thanks tho-
~chad