need some help if possible..

[JuNiOr_Gr]

hi all.. i have to make a project and i think that access is the program i must do it. that i have to do is make a program in which i will add names of companys, some info about them(from,phones) and staff they sell.
after i have added all my data (like 500-600companys and their products) i want to open the program and be able to make a simple search with the name of the product and get printed the companys that sells it or make a search with the companys name and print the files and all the data i have added. the search engine i have in my head looks like this phonebook herehas.. and the way it prints the results is the same i would like to get mine. but i dont want it to be a phone book and with no so many entrys(name,surname...) i would prefer to have just name of the company, phone, where the company is from, and products.. is there anyone that has any idea how i can do this?
thx a lot..

(sorry for my english )

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Junior, I'm going to give you some advice as to how to proceed because I don't have a copy of what you described handy.

1. Get a box (not a pack ... a BOX) of sticky note pads, a white board, and some dry erase markers and erasers.

2. Look at the entities (objects) associated with your problem. You have named at least companies and sellable items. Other objects might exist, but only you know your problem well enough to decide that.

3. On your white board, start designing a set of tables to define your problem. At this point, you MUST familiarize yourself with the concepts of NORMALIZATION. If you Google-Search this topic, you will probably get several million hits. (No, I'm not kidding and not overestimating for effect.) Pick a few web sites in the .EDU domain representing reputable colleges or universities. You'll also see .COM sites for places like ORACLE and IBM and a few other commercial vendors. Stick with the sites you recognize and read up on the topic.

4. OK, now comes the fun part. Decide the questions you will want to ask. Why? Because of one of the Old Programmer's rules: Access won't tell you anything you didn't tell it first. This set of questions will tell you the fields in your tables. Example: You said you might wish phone numbers of the companies that sell product XYZ-123 but you can't do that unless PHONE NUMBER is one of your fields. Get the idea?

5. Now here is where the sticky notes come into play. For each table you identify, use a sticky note to represent one record in that table and mentally go through the process of how you would build the report if you were doing it based on paper records. This will help you find required relationships - and linking tables - you need to define between multiple tables. Hint: You suggest that product XYZ-123 might be sold by more than one company. This suggests a linking table which contains the product ID and the ID of the company that makes it. Then, when you are ready to do your queries, you can search the linking table for the product you want and follow the company IDs to get the phone numbers. The normalization discussions will discuss the concept of many-to-many relationships, and this is probably one such case. Just remember that Access doesn't DIRECTLY implement many-to-many relationships. Instead, you build an intermediate linking table that implements TWO one-to-many relationships at once.

This is the basic concept of designing a database for business. You model the physical steps so that you can tell the computer what you want it to do. This method is part of the Old Programmer's rule: If you can't do it on paper first, you can't ever do it in Access.

 

[JuNiOr_Gr]

i think you are right.. i wasnt specific. let me try again to expain what i have in my head . i am looking for a program same as thisone but i want to be able to change the names of the labels when i add a new contact.i would like to have the list of everyone i have added like this prorgam has and also be able to do a simple and easy text search(also as this program has).
the only labers i would like to have when i add a new contact are Name of the company,Products, Notes. just these. :S do i really need access to do something like this?

best regards..