Design HELP!

[Karen]

Someone please help me!

I need to design a db for our course department that will
track our course participants and the courses we've done/
when we've done them. Just when I think I've figured out
which tables I need, I think of something else and mess
myself up!

Here are the relationships I've come up with so far:
1) Clients can have many courses.
2) Courses can have many participants.
3) Faculty can conduct many courses.
4) Participants can attend many courses.

So far I have the following tables:

tbl Clients
tbl Participants
tbl SpecificCourse
tbl MasterCourse
tbl Faculty

The difference between Specific Course and Master Course
is that the Master Course table holds info on things like
number of participants per class, materials lists, etc.
while the Specific Course table holds information on (what
else?!) specific information like date held, location, etc.

I need help thinking this out. I'm having a really hard
time! Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Tim Ferguson]

The difference between Specific Course and Master Course
is that the Master Course table holds info on things like
number of participants per class, materials lists, etc.
while the Specific Course table holds information on (what
else?!) specific information like date held, location, etc.

It all looked pretty good until this paragraph. You should stop thinking in
terms of tables, and carry on thinking in terms of things (or entities).
Entities can be concrete things (like Participants) or abstract (like
Registration or Attendances.

It sounds like you have at least a couple of things here. You might have a
CourseDesign, which is instructions on how a particular course would be set
up, and a ClassOffered, which would be the actual instance of a class being
held over a term or so. I would guess that there are Lectures (or Lessions
or Sessions or whatever) too; and so on.

On the other hand, if you need a more sophisticated design then you can
shell out the actual Criteria for each Course or the for Classes
themselves.

HTH


Tim F

 

[Karen]

That does help bunches Tim. I was hoping that I was
somewhat on the right track.

If I'm understanding what I read correctly, I should start
out simple but design flexibly so that there is room for
sophistication later on.

Thanks again for your help and if you (or anyone) has any
further thoughts, please send them on!

Karen

 

[Henry]

DB design is an art as much as it is a science. Looking
at the science side you must first establish the purpose
for your DB. What do you want the results to be? Once
you have established the desired results requirements,
then you figure out what entities do I need and what data
do I need to accomplish the results. Now you have some
idea of what data needs to be stored in a DB. Refine the
data elements down to the atomic level and then start
building tables. Now you must normalize these tables if
you want the DB to work for you. Normalized tables lead
to data entry and data extraction (reports) processes.
From this foundation you design the automation (VBA) and
build user interfaces (forms). And so on.
I highly recommend the book (2 volume set) by Ken Getz +,
Access 2000 Developer's Handbook", published by SYBEX.
Available from Amazon.com, plus others, for a very
reasonable (discounted) price. This is a reference and
tutorial with many examples and a CD that contains all
the example plus more.

Enjoy your design course and I wish you success. Come
back to us with more questions so we can help.

Cheers,
Henry

 

[Karen]

Thanks Henry. I'll take your advice and look for the books
on Amazon. I appreciate your taking the time to explain
this to me! I'll definitely be back for more help!

Karen