One table vs 100+ tables

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Guest

I have about 100+ charts (each chart is a group of trendlines with data
points and labels for each point, and the x and y axis may vary between
charts) and I want to create a database from it with the capabilty to
1. search charts by category, title, x, y, etc. create a list of results,
and draw the chart when user click on one of the search result.
2. be able to expand, such as adding data to a chart or adding charts.

Is Access capable to handle it? If not, what other choise I have for a
simple cheap design? If Access is ok, I have the following question.

I'm trying to come up a design for creating charts out of tables. I have
two design ideas in mind, would you suggest me the better one, or come up a
new idea?
Idea A. all charts in one or a few tables with an extra field as chart name
pro: can use one function to draw all the charts
con: may have to add columns if future expansion requires

Idea B. one table for each chart, and use chart name as table name
pro: easy to maintain and update tables, and flexible to future expansion
con: not sure if one function can handle all the charts by table name?

the design is simpler the better, I plan to get it done in a few days (I
mean the archeture, not adding data) if possible.

thank you vey much in advance,

Wei
 
wz said:
I have about 100+ charts (each chart is a group of trendlines with
data points and labels for each point, and the x and y axis may vary
between charts) and I want to create a database from it with the
capabilty to
1. search charts by category, title, x, y, etc. create a list of
results, and draw the chart when user click on one of the search
result.
2. be able to expand, such as adding data to a chart or adding charts.

Is Access capable to handle it? If not, what other choise I have for a
simple cheap design? If Access is ok, I have the following question.

I'm trying to come up a design for creating charts out of tables. I
have two design ideas in mind, would you suggest me the better one,
or come up a new idea?
Idea A. all charts in one or a few tables with an extra field as
chart name pro: can use one function to draw all the charts
con: may have to add columns if future expansion requires

Idea B. one table for each chart, and use chart name as table name
pro: easy to maintain and update tables, and flexible to future
expansion con: not sure if one function can handle all the charts by
table name?

the design is simpler the better, I plan to get it done in a few days
(I mean the archeture, not adding data) if possible.

thank you vey much in advance,

Wei
Click to expand...

I'm not sure how these charts are represented as data, or how they are
drawn, but as a rule you should avoid storing data in table names. I'd
go for Idea A, all charts in one or a few tables. Your "con" for that
idea, having to add columns in the case of future expansion, makes me
wonder if maybe your chart data could be normalized further. For
example, if you have a table with one record per chart and one field per
data point, you'd probably do better to have a table of charts (one
record per chart) and a table of data points (one record per data point
per chart). Then you might use a crosstab query if you need to produce
a record containing all the data points for a given chart.
 
wz said:
I have about 100+ charts (each chart is a group of trendlines with
Click to expand...

By the way, I notice you also posted this question independently in a
different newsgroup. That's called "multiposting", and it's generally
frowned on because others don't know what answers have already been
given, and so they duplicate the effort. Also it's harder for you to
keep track of the various replies, and it's harder for later readers of
the question, who may be looking for the same answer, to learn what they
need.

In most cases a single, well-chosen newsgroup will do. If your question
really is relevant to more than one newsgroup, the approved technique is
to "crosspost" it instead, by listing multiple newsgroups in the To: or
Newsgroups: line of a single message. If you do that, the message and
any replies will appear in all the listed newsgroups automatically,
which is beneficial to all concerned.
 
Thank you for the recommandations and the tip. I'd like to do "crosspost",
but I can't find a place where I can enter multiple newsgroups, and I can
only pick one group from the dropdown list, since I'm using this website
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/ to post my questions.
Is there any way to do crossposting in this site other than using a separate
news reader?

thx
 
wz said:
Thank you for the recommandations and the tip. I'd like to do
"crosspost", but I can't find a place where I can enter multiple
newsgroups, and I can only pick one group from the dropdown list,
since I'm using this website
http://www.microsoft.com/office/community/ to post my questions.
Is there any way to do crossposting in this site other than using a
separate news reader?
Click to expand...

Good grief! They don't make it easy, do they? I use a newsreader
client (Outlook Express) myself, so I hadn't realized how badly the new
webnews interface is set up.

To answer your question, if you click on the little "Advanced Options"
tag at the bottom of the "New Question" page, it will give you a box
into which you can put a list of newsgroups to crosspost into. You do
have to use the full, proper newsgroup name, which (of course) you may
not know, since the real names of the newsgroups aren't given in the
dropdown list at the top of the page. You may need to go to some site
like Google Groups (http://groups.google.com) to find out what the real
newsgroup names are, or you use Outlook Express to get a list of
newsgroups available on server "msnews.microsoft.com". What an
annoyance!
 
You can simplify your charts by programatically setting the Record Source for
the chart dependent on the data in your tables. In order to make them more
flexible you can embed the chart in a form and use controls such as list
boxes or combo boxes to modify the record source, thus modifying the data in
the charts. We went a step further with ours and also modified the type of
chart (bar vs. line) dependent on the data that was chosen in our list boxes.


With Access 2002 you can also take advantage of the Pivot Chart View
function that gives your users almost unlimited flexibility to chart your
data. I hope this helps.
 
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