Creating relationship Problems

[Gareth]

Hi, So I am brand new to Access, and never played with it before.

I am trying to create a database similar to ones recruitment companies have,
list of candidates with personal info, skills, pay, record of working hours
and such.

i am starting off small by creating a table of personal details and skills.
I think I understand the concept of a relationship here, but I cant seem to
get it right. I am trying to relate first and last name so that all other new
tables (Skills) will automatically have these 2 fields already filled out.
I can do this by creating a relationship but when I look at the table in
question, it is still blank?

Please help

Thanks

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Relationships do not populate fields in other tables. Their purpose is
simply to indicate which fields in TableA are related to fields in TableB.
You also have the option of using them for Referential Integrity (you cannot
insert a row in TableB unless a corresponding row exists in TableA). If you
do use them to enforce RI, you also have the option of specifying Cascade
Delete (all related records in TableB will be deleted when a specific entry
in TableA is deleted) and/or Cascade Update (the related records in TableB
will be updated if the related fields in TableA are updated)

In order to be able to automatically populate the related fields, you need
to use a Form/Subform approach. Once you've specified the
LinkMasterFields/LinkChildFields between the two, the LinkChildFields will
be automatically populated with the content of the LinkMasterFields for new
records.

 

[John W. Vinson]

Hi, So I am brand new to Access, and never played with it before.

I am trying to create a database similar to ones recruitment companies have,
list of candidates with personal info, skills, pay, record of working hours
and such.

i am starting off small by creating a table of personal details and skills.
I think I understand the concept of a relationship here, but I cant seem to
get it right. I am trying to relate first and last name so that all other new
tables (Skills) will automatically have these 2 fields already filled out.
I can do this by creating a relationship but when I look at the table in
question, it is still blank?

Please help

Thanks

You're misunderstanding how relationships work! Relational databases use the
"Grandmother's Pantry Principle": "A place - ONE place! - for everything,
everything in its place". The personal details such as first and last name
should exist in the personal details table, *AND NOPLACE ELSE*. You would use
a Form (displaying the name) with a Subform to display subtable data in
conjunction with main table data.

There are some good tutorials available:

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

A free tutorial written by Crystal (MS Access MVP):
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:
http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials

 

[Gareth]

Hi John

Okay so I have to create forms, will this show several tables worth of infor
for one particular person though?
What I want to do is have personal files linked to qualifications, work
schedulae, pay rate and a way of printing / emailing reports.

The links you kindly provided dont seem to answer these or show how?

Thanks in advance.
gareth

 

[John W. Vinson]

Hi John

Okay so I have to create forms, will this show several tables worth of infor
for one particular person though?
What I want to do is have personal files linked to qualifications, work
schedulae, pay rate and a way of printing / emailing reports.

The links you kindly provided dont seem to answer these or show how?

Well, if you're looking for a step by step recipe for how to create *your
customized personnel application*, you're not going to find it, I fear!

A Form can have a Tab Control on it, with multiple subforms on different pages
of the tab control, to let you show as much data as you wish.

You really need to step back from thinking about the final output and think -
and learn - about the actual structure of your database. You will use Tables
(properly normalized and related tables) to store your data; Queries to
select, sort and combine data from multiple tables; Forms to view and edit the
data onscreen; and Reports for printing and emailing. I can't tell you how
*YOUR* form should look because I don't know your business model; what you're
asking is for a complete, customized, worked-out application, and
unfortunately that's beyond the scope of a free, volunteer-staffed forum.