Too Late to Make Changes? (1 Viewer)

[Richie2837]

Hi Everyone,

I've inherited the task of managing a fairly basic contacts database used by the charity I work for. I say basic meaning in terms of its design - the great bulk of our 3500+ client records are stored in a single table made up of approximately 95 different fields.

Now I've been asked to make further adaptations to the database to allow it to store even more information, relating to particular areas of the work we do with our clients.

What I want to know is, is it too late to add additional fields/tables to the database to accomodate these additional records? Also what would be the best way of doing it - including the new fields in the main table or creating new tables and hoping I can get my head around the relationships?

Any help is very much appreciated!

 

[GaryPanic]

this should not be too much of a problem
form a purist view
your first table should be something like

Accountid
Accountname
Address1
Address2
Address3
Address4
Postcode-zip
tel
fax


it also expand to include more personal detail
POC (Point of contact)
Title
FName
Surname

 

[GaryPanic]

then to this you add tables with a link

now your link would be
accountid
so every table will have this Primary key as its foreigh key



so if you visualise
your account table - draw it as a square on paper- then draw lines to other tables that you want to sort stuff in - each of these tables has a line from the account table into it each table will have a unique id nubmer (primary key) and also a foreighn key

now as to sorting out your old d/base
what information do you want to sepearate out
and how to do it

well start by first geting a copy of the data - so if it cocks up you have not cocked the whole lot up.



make the empty tbales up as you want and append the information formt he one large table into it - but ensure that every table still has the unqiue number in it from the account or main table - now you should end up with 4-5 etc smaller tables every one must have the primary number - you can assign PK numbers later but account number 1 must have the nubmer 1 in every table account number 2 must have 2 in every table

you can get the form wizard to look these up later -
now you can almost add as many tables as you need too.

there is no need for fancy coding this can all be done via qry - make tables or append if you wish to rename fields -