Too many columns in my table, need help.

[pixelpusher]

Hello.

Here's some background on what I'm trying to do. I am building a database that will hold data on 31 parks. Each park will contain many advertisers and each advertiser may be in one or many parks. Theres more to this but i will just stick to what I am having trouble with.

The tables i have made thus far pertaining to my question are:

1. "Parks" table. It has two cols one for ParkID (key) and ParkName
2. "Advertisers" table. It has 9 cols for things such as AdvertiserID (key), addresss, etc...
3. "AdsData" table. This is the problem table. It contains AdID (key) and ad content columns (copy, names, driving directions, etc...). In addition to the ad content however, I need each ad to indicate which of the 31 parks it is located in (one or many) and which of the 16 park activities (things like hiking, swimming...i have another table for these) it is to appear in (one or many).

The only solution I have been able to come up with is to make a table ("AdsData") with 55 columns in it. In addition to the ad content data for each ad, there are 16 yes/no columns for selecting one or more activities for the ad to appear in and 31 yes/no columns for selecting one or more parks for the ad to appear in.

This seems excessive because I have a table with all the Parks in it and I have a table with all the Activities in it. Plus I've been told that having so many columns in a table is a bad, bad thing.

But in my limited knowledge of Access, this is the only solution I can come up with.

Is this the only way to do this?

 

[Uncle Gizmo]

>>>there are 16 yes/no columns for selecting one or more activities<<<

You need to think of a way of putting the sixteen columns as rows in another table. So you would have something like :
FldActivity, FldActivityYesNo

amendment:

as fields, (columns) in your table. You would now have practically no limit to the number of entries you could make!

 

[pixelpusher]

like i said in the other forum. Thanks for your help

 

[KeithG]

You could create a table called Adlocation with a many to one relationship to Ads data on AdID. You would need to also include a Foreigh key of ParkID. Also you could create table called AdActivities with a many to one relatioship with Ads data on AdID and a field for Activity.