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Old June 4th, 2010, 05:30 PM posted to microsoft.public.access.tablesdbdesign
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Default db design to calculate overlap in group membership in time

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your response. I can identify individual birds by a unique color
combination. The field is a 3 letter code corresponding to the 3 colors used
to id the bird (ex: bbb is the bird with the blue-blue-blue color combo). I
have observations of individuals at one specific location, so any birds
observed at that location at the same time are defined as associated. I need
to be able to query the db for both group composition at any one time as well
as overall shared association time among any 2 individuals. I have not yet
entered the data -- I am trying to figure out the best format first to avoid
headaches later. I am currently envisioning a table like this (below), but am
very open to suggestions!

Date Time ID Type (a=arrival, d=departure)
12-Jun 9:01 bbb a
12-Jun 9:02 bbb d
12-Jun 9:02 rrr a
12-Jun 9:02 brr a
12-Jun 9:03 rrr d

I would like to run a query that will calculate the amount of time that every
bird shared with every other bird (ex from above: bbb shared 0 with rrr, brr;
rrr shared 1 with brr; etc). I can have the time of arrival coded in time of
day or in number of seconds from the start of observation, which may make
calculations simpler.

In response to Jeff Boyce's response, I have experience constructing
relational databases and queries. I am self-taught, so they usually aren't
pretty, but I can usually get things to work. This question with this db that
I have is beyond what I have tried to do before. Again, any suggestions would
be very appreciated.

Thanks,

Liz

Steve wrote:
Hi Liz,

I think that the first thing is to answer two questions ...
1. "....one bird is in the same group as another bird" implies that you
can identify individual birds. Can you do that and what are the
characteristics (fields) that can be used to uniquely identify a bird?

2. What factors (fields) distinguishes one group from another. For
example, Bird A and Bird B are together; is that a group? At another spot,
Bird C and Bird D are together; is that a group? After a few moments, Bird C
and Bird D join Bird A and Bird B. There are now four birds together, is
that group AB, Group CD or a new group.

Steve


Hi all,

[quoted text clipped - 35 lines]

Liz


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