I need to create a system that can help me to track the way the contracts are
being processed. Also mainlly to let me know which department the contracts
is currently
As with any database, you need to start by stepping away from your
computer. Get a cup of coffee, or tea, or other favored beverage; a
pad of paper, a pencil, and a good eraser.
Identify the Entities that you'll need to deal with in the
application. An Entity is a person, thing, or event; the entities
you've mentioned are Contracts, Departments, and (I presume, reading
between the lines) Actions on contracts.
For each kind of entity, identify its Attributes - bits of information
that you need to know about each entity. I don't know your business so
I have no idea what attributes a contract might have but I can imagine
things like ContractDate, DueDate, BudgetCeiling, etc.
Then identify the relationships between the entities. Each Department
will deal with many Contracts; I'd guess that each Contract will be
handled by many Departments - so you have a many to many relationship.
Each type of Entity will correspond to a Table. Each Attribute will
correspond to a field in that table. Each one-to-many relationship
will be a relationship between two tables; each many-to-many
relationship requires a new table to model the relationship, and two
relationships.
Once you have the tables, fields, and relationships properly defined,
you have permission to turn on your computer, open Access, and start
creating tables and relationships. Only THEN would you start designing
Forms to display and edit the data, and Reports to print it out.
There are some good tutorials referenced at:
Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://home.bendbroadband.com/conradsystems/accessjunkie/resources.html
The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html
Particularly check the Database Design 101 links on Jeff's website.
John W. Vinson[MVP]
