John,

I know it was you, but I did not feel it was appropriate for me to use your
name in my questions, hence “an MVP commented”.

John, no offence was taken by your comment. I did go back and re-read my
original posting and realized that I did not provide anywhere near enough
information for you to think of anything else. That was entirely my fault
for not being more detailed. I’m still having a problem drawing the line
between not enough detail and too much detail. Sorry about that. I agree
that when you read a brief posting, it is very difficult to tell what a
person’s background is. In trying to payback you MVP’s for answering my
questions, I have been trying to answer forum questions that I have
previously asked and received answers. I know it is impossible to tell from
a brief posting how knowledgeable a poster might be. Fully agree there.

I also agree with your comment about wide-flat spreadsheetish non-normalized
designs are. I responded to someone tonight about the training database.
They had quite a few issues with the tables. I fully understand the issue.

I had NO problem what so ever with your response and you have not reason at
all to apologize. Personally, I feel bad that you feel the way you do. I
never took offence at your comments.

While I have a lot of db experience, I am still a newbie when it comes to
Access. I thought that Access was like other database engines. While that
is somewhat true, it is mostly a false statement because the VBA code and
events work so differently from anything I’ve used. I’m still beating my
head against that learning cliff.

I interpreted your comment as implying that it was better to have a couple
of small master tables that one large master table. Since it was coming from
an MVP, I figured that I had better ask some more questions. Since I did not
know how to ask you directly, I just put it on the forum.

I agree with comment about a field being expensive in an improperly
normalized table structure resulting in all sorts of workarounds. 10 of the
30 new fields had to do with funeral information for a deceased member.
Since all of the information is specific to the individual member, I included
on the member table. You might be able to argue that it should go in it own
table, but for data entry and reporting simplicity I included it my member
table.

Actually, your comment did help me because I was reminded about Access 4k
record size limitation. I’m not sure if a completely filled out record will
excess 4k or not, I will have to check. So that alone will prevent a problem
from occurring.

If the potential record size will exceed 4k, I will break on the funeral
information into a separate table as that information is quite lengthy.

I do have one question for you about your “non-interdependent” field. What
do you mean by that? To me, a policy effective date and expiration date are
interdependent because the effective date has to be before the expiration
date. Also City, St, and zip seem to be interdependent. So, what do you
mean by non-interdependent?

Please, never bow out of one my questions. I have learned so much from you
and the other MVP that I would be on the loosing end of that deal.

Thank you for all of your assistance. I have no way to express my
appreciation except to say if you are ever in the Orlando, Fl area I would be
glad to give you and airboat ride in the whiles of the Florida swamps. I’ll
show you the real Florida.

Thanks again for all of your help.

Dennis