so having thought about what you said on things being easier to do now as opposed to after I have a working database... Ive decided I should add the ability to do a few more things, things I thought after I learned more I may add... or had thought of in passing thinking it would be cool... well easier to do now then later
Anyway to tblcomics I figured I would add a cover field, and a varient field since sometimes comics are varients or have different covers.. the varient I figured would be a yes no, and coverr would be short text
Both of these sound fine.
I also decided to add an attachment option to this so that I could have the option of snapping a pic of a cover to remind myself of what something is without having to fish it out of the storage boxes.
Also perfectly fine. My only suggestion might be that if there's a likelihood of multiple attachments, you may want to turn THIS into a linked table as well rather than simply a field in tblComics.
Please let me know if these throw up any alarm bells that I am unaware of.
None so far.
My next alteration is in my storage keeping in general... in fact I think Im going to revamp it somewhat... now in all honesty I doubt this will be needed but I figure Ill plan for the worst case scenario where for some reason my comic collection grows alot and I need a lot more storage space.
Anyway having worked in an office building before I know that sometimes its nice to be able to find a record, or in this case a comic, without having to consult my databse... so Im altering my box numbering system so that the box name itself would let me have a general idea about what was in that box.
Basically I want the name to consist of a few things for convenience and yes Im probably going way overboard but part of the reason Im doing this is also to learn access lol so I may as well try it
ANyway my label would consist of something like this: (T)(Z)(P)(A)(#) P being the difficult part which Ill get into in a sec
T = box type so a short box may be the letter S or a long box L or a tote T
Z = Storage Type... if the box was series specific, S, Publisher P, or Mixed M
P = Publisher(s) so (D)C (M)arvel (I)mage
A = Active... is this a box that I have an active series in or one im done collecting
# = number of box simple enough
Some of that I really dont need but I can see a situation where I could potentially want it so I figured I may as well do it, I can always remove things later.
This is going to stretch my knowledge in access even more since its going to mean I want a table called say tblstorageboxs which simply lists the various boxes available
then I would have my tblstorageloc which would have the actual comic locations... so to draw it out Im thinking along these lines:
tblstorageboxes
-BoxID (main key)
-type
-active
-number
-(MAYBE)box full yes/no
tblstorageloc
-ID(needed field but not for my purposes so hidden)
-BoxID (linked to Box ID above)
-ComicID (linked to my tblcomics)
You wouldn't put ComicID in this table. Instead, you would include BoxID and StorageLocID in tblComics.
I also was considering adding
tblstorageboxtype
-type (mainly so I can easily select it later from a dropdown menu for tblstorageboxes)
-(MAYBE)capacity that way I can monitor when a box is getting full
as for the capacity and above box full yes no thing... I would say the box capacity would be there so I could when going to add a comic to a box I could have a dialoge where it shows me how many comics are in a box, as well as the box capacity... then I could also have a check box there so I could mark a box as full and close it off persay
Your box full thing here is technically a calculated field, and thus should not be saved in the database. Instead, you can design queries that count the number of comics in each box, and compare them to the max capacity of the box. You can use code or even properties on the controls in order to notify the user if a box is full, or even prevent it from being selected altogether.
Edit: One thing just came to mind. If you're planning on marking a box as being full arbitrarily rather than by the number of comics in it, then yes, you'll need to include BoxIsFull as a field in your Boxes table.
anyway thats where my thoughts are atm, Ill be honest its late and I had a rough day so its entirely possible Im slightly insane in this lol but I still wanted to bounce it off you so you could either tell me im going way over board or if not help me refine my ideas some.
Thanks again
lol when this is all said and done Ill have to offer my database up on the net for all other comic collectors out there since the closest thing to this is like 50 dollars... the more expensive ones can also automatically check values in some database somewhere but ya... no way will I attempt that one lol
Yeah, comic collectors can be nuts. You make this thing good enough, and I'm certain you could sell it to users. Just an FYI, though - if you go that route, you definitely want to lock the code away from prying eyes, which is a lot of work, and Access just is not all that secure. In addition, you would want to convert the final project to an accde or mde file, and even then they need a full Access install to use it. (Another option is an accdr file based on the accde, which only requires the installation of the Access runtime from M$.) Even then, the database can be recompiled. We won't even get into piracy protection.
If you really want to go that route, there are a ton of threads on this site from people asking how to do all that, and you will be VERY familiar with VBA by the time you're done.
