equipment database questions

[Guest]

I've gotten the task of designing an "asset register" for a large
construction company. I figure that having everything in one database is the
best approach, hoever I've never used Access before and am not sure where to
start. I do know that time invested in getting the approach and design
correct will save time and effort later on.

The company simply need a way of looking at:

1. all of their inventory.
2. specific items in their inventory.

The second task would contain the details of the particular "asset", wether
it be a crane or dump truck. Details would include manufacturer info, as well
as info on the truck mainteneance etc.

And, the entire thing has to be designed so that someone else can add a new
piece of equipment to the database without me being around.

So, I'm asking for suggestions as to where to begin and what approach to take.

 

[John Vinson]

I've gotten the task of designing an "asset register" for a large
construction company. I figure that having everything in one database is the
best approach, hoever I've never used Access before and am not sure where to
start. I do know that time invested in getting the approach and design
correct will save time and effort later on.

The company simply need a way of looking at:

1. all of their inventory.
2. specific items in their inventory.

The second task would contain the details of the particular "asset", wether
it be a crane or dump truck. Details would include manufacturer info, as well
as info on the truck mainteneance etc.

And, the entire thing has to be designed so that someone else can add a new
piece of equipment to the database without me being around.

So, I'm asking for suggestions as to where to begin and what approach to take.

Sorry it's been a couple of days replying.

Have you looked over any of the resources about Access (or general
relational database) design? There are a number of resources listed at
http://www.mvps.org/access and the links therein.

Basically, you start by identifying the "Entities" - assets,
manufacturers, types of maintenance, maintenance events, etc. Each
type of Entity gets its own table; that is, you'll have a table of
Equipment (containing all of the trucks, cranes, etc.), a table of
Maintenance (related one to many to the Equipment table with fields
for the equipmentID, the type of maintenance, and the date, plus any
other information you need about the maintenance).

You'ld then create Forms (with subforms) to enter data into these
tables. The users should probably never see the table datasheets at
all; they're of very limited utility compared to Forms.

Finally you'll need to create some Reports to print data.

If you have problems setting this up, please post some more details.

John W. Vinson[MVP]