"Jamie Collins" wrote in message
oups.com...

andreainpanama wrote:
I want a way that every single person has a
client ID number.

Clients
=======
ClientID
LastName
FirstName
NationalityID

How do you know whether today's Jean Dupont from France is the Jean
Dupont from France who stayed here in July last year or is the Jean
Dupont from France who stayed here in July last year e.g. do you
require them to quote their ClientID number when repeat booking?

Since she hasn't specified any need to know more about the client than
nationality, I'm not sure this is significant. One Jean Dupont from France
is as good as another, except of course if they are staying there at the
same time. And even then the difference may not be significant in terms of
the database, depending on what she is using it for.

If she wants to identify down to the actual person level, she will need more
information, such as address. Even that is subject to change. However,
that may not really matter, since I'm not sure there's any realistic
downside in a hostel database of having two entries for the same person at
different addresses.

That does bring up an interesting point, however, which is that if she wants
to distinguish Jean Dupont from France from Jean Dupont from Belgium, she
would need to add the nationalities to the combobox.

Another approach could be to record their passport number, with perhaps
a different identiifer for locals.

That will go over well with clients :-).

Also note that NationalityID might be better as country of residence
using the ISO 3166 standard country codes.

Sure, if you have the list handy and feel like entering them all.

-Amy