Normalization & DB Design

[jepoysaipan]

Hi Guys,

I have a new task which is to design an order tracking for our company using the attached excel format.

Having hard time normalizing ang designing the interface since the user requested the form to be as easy as the excel since they are used to it.

You help is highly appreciated.

Thanks again & again!

Jeff

 

[Ron_dK]

Acces comes with a number of sample dbases.
Order entry is one of them. I guess that one might suit your needs. Just try it and take a look at how it is configured.

Hth

 

[Pat Hartman]

You need to take off your spreadsheet hat and put on your relational database hat. Spreadsheets store data the way it is viewed. This is great for viewing but usually bad for updating and worse for reporting. If you normalize the data so that you don't have three hard-coded steps which are side-by-side but instead have each step be a separate row in the many-side table, you will find that you can add steps without reprogramming everything if it becomes necessary and you can still create a report that looks like your spreadsheet by using a crosstab query.

 

[jepoysaipan]

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the enlightenment, Believe it or not I consumed the whole day yesterday just trying to normalize the data but still can't get it to work plus the fact that I need to do some form design

I am really running out of time on this one and probably if I can't produce the result by 2 weeks I will just tell them to buy a software for the tracking of our PO, it just drained me for the past 2 days.

Thanks a lot.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Access is deceptively easy to use. That doesn't mean that you can just sit down and create a database. Don't give up yet. Take a stab at normalizing the data and post your results. We'll help you get it right. That is the biggest battle. It is all down hill from there.

 

[jepoysaipan]

Hi Pat,

Thanks for the encouragement, after so many hours here is what I have so far (pls. see attachment for details).

Please let me know what I messed up.

Thanks again.

Jeff