I have a table with Suppliers, with a couple of different categories for
suppliers. One type, I want to gather additional information. Should I
set up one table and blank out. If so, how to set the forms? If multiples,
how do I set up the links?>
I'm not certain just what you need here. One possible approach would
be just to have fields which are left NULL if they don't apply to the
particular category; this isn't as bad as it might sound, since Access
doesn't store anything on disk for Null fields.
A bit better might be "subclassing" - one of the rare instances in
which one to one relationships are valid. Have a Supplier table with
SupplierID as its primary key, and a separate SupplierInfo table, also
with SupplierID as *its* primary key. Join the two tables, SupplierID
to SupplierID, in the relationships window; Access will specify that
this is a one to one relationship. This table would contain the fields
for the needed additional info.
A convenient user interface would be to use a Form based on Suppliers,
with a subform based on SupplierInfo. If you want to constrain
additional info to only records with the right catgory, use code in
the main form's Current event and the AfterUpdate event of the control
which selects the catgory to make the subform visible or not.
John W. Vinson[MVP]
