View Single Post
  #5  
Old December 1st, 2009, 05:10 PM posted to microsoft.public.access.tablesdbdesign
Bernard Peek[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 42
Default New to the whole DB world

In message , freddy
writes

My idea was to have three tables: one for username which will have full
name, one for computername which will have all the computer stuff like
memory, hd, etc and one for software which will have software name, version,
installed date, etc. Please someone help me out.


That's a plausible starting point but it will pay you to do some
groundwork with the traditional HB pencil and a large sheet of paper.
Don't forget the eraser, you will need it.

Start by plotting all of the entities on your paper, those are the types
of things that your system will know about. Machines will be there but
you may need to separate them into groups, for instance by physical
location. If so then locations will be another entity.

Once you have the entities, sketch in the relationships between them.
One location has many machines so draw a 1:many arrow from Locations to
Machines. The traditional format is a line with a crows-foot symbol at
the many end.

Now start detailing what attributes each entity has. That's the data
that your system needs to know about each instance of that entity. One
of those data items, or a combination of them, will uniquely identify
each instance of that entity. That attribute, or combination of
attributes becomes the Key of the entity. At this stage you shouldn't be
thinking about a Primary Key.

Put all of this design onto a clean sheet of paper, with the entities
arranged in some logical fashion. Go fishing for the weekend.

Come back and see whether the design still makes sense.

Now you can start turning each of those entities into an Access table.


--
Bernard Peek