Stock control program

[DennisJones]

I am looking at developing a stock control program. There will be several items that need updating but how do I store a global total of how many items are in stock at any time? I will have records of what is coming in and out but ideally I would update some sort of global counter for each product to keep a tally of how many are on the shelf. What is the normal way of doing this in a relational database without having to trawl through all of the records every time I need to check stock levels?

Thanks

Dennis

 

[Rabbie]

This link has a useful discussion on when to have a calculated field in your DB

 

[Crowbar]

This link - http://www.allenbrowne.com/AppInventory.html is a must read when considering a stock database. That info, plus some reading and posting here made it possible for me to create a successful stock databse, which is now in production and working GREAT!

 

[neileg]

What is the normal way of doing this in a relational database without having to trawl through all of the records every time I need to check stock levels?

That's the right way to do it!