student database

Hi, I am new to databases. I have been trying to teach myself enough so that
I can develop a db to track student volunteer hours. Each grade level has a
different service hour requirement ( ie 9th grade requires 10 hours, 10th
grade = 20 hours, 11th grade = 30 hours, 12th grade = 40 hours). I have
started a Student Service Card with a Service Hour Detail subform. I was
thinking that tabbed subforms titled with the applicable school years (since
a freshman would have different school year to track than a sophomore). What
is the easiest way at the beginning of the school year to add the freshman as
a group with the appropriate school years on the tabs. Also, can I somehow
have an automatic checkbox when the requirement has been met for each school
year.

Jeez when I started this and boasted to my coworkers that I was going to do
this, I thought it would be easy!! They keep asking where it is, and how
embarassed am I??

Thanks for any info you can give me. I just can't take another year of
spreadsheet hell and tracking 1200 students. HELP!

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:05:27 -0800, "camu"
wrote:

Hi, I am new to databases. I have been trying to teach myself enough so that
I can develop a db to track student volunteer hours. Each grade level has a
different service hour requirement ( ie 9th grade requires 10 hours, 10th
grade = 20 hours, 11th grade = 30 hours, 12th grade = 40 hours). I have
started a Student Service Card with a Service Hour Detail subform. I was
thinking that tabbed subforms titled with the applicable school years (since
a freshman would have different school year to track than a sophomore). What
is the easiest way at the beginning of the school year to add the freshman as
a group with the appropriate school years on the tabs. Also, can I somehow
have an automatic checkbox when the requirement has been met for each school
year.

Jeez when I started this and boasted to my coworkers that I was going to do
this, I thought it would be easy!! They keep asking where it is, and how
embarassed am I??

Thanks for any info you can give me. I just can't take another year of
spreadsheet hell and tracking 1200 students. HELP!

Stop, and step back a bit.

Forms are JUST TOOLS. You should start your design, not with the
Forms, but with a logical, normalized set of Tables; then design the
forms to fit the tables, not vice versa! I know it's very tempting to
plunge right into form design but it's pretty much guaranteed to give
you a flawed and difficult design.

Check out some of the links at

http://home.bendbroadband.com/conrad...resources.html

particularly the Database Design 101 links. At a glance, you will need
a table for Grades (with only four records), a table for Students, and
a table for Service; you would emphatically NOT add a new record when
a student graduates from being a freshman to being a sophomore
(instead just change that student's Grade field), nor would you store
in any table that the requirement has been met (as this can easily be
calculated on the fly from the hours-required vs. the hours-worked).


John W. Vinson[MVP]

I'm sorry I did not give you enough details. I did develop tables and they
a Students, StudentService, Grades, Organizations,
SchoolYear, ServiceCategory, Student Status

The Grade table was developed as you said with the 4 grades and a second
field for service hours requirement per grade. The SchoolYear table has the
primary key of: 0506 for the 2005/06 school year, etc. That would designate
which school year to attribute the hours to as the data is entered.

I added an Organization table and Service Category table because I am asked
to report who we are serving.

So I am now faced with developing the forms and the clearest way to input
and present the data.

Also, I have been on every Access info page on the web. It has helped
immensely to get me this far but I am in the middle of knowing the very
basics and staring blankly at the event procedures, macros, etc. I can't find
much info move to the next step.

Have I made it any clearer? or have I confused you? Thanks for your response.


"John Vinson" wrote:

On Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:05:27 -0800, "camu"
wrote:

Hi, I am new to databases. I have been trying to teach myself enough so that
I can develop a db to track student volunteer hours. Each grade level has a
different service hour requirement ( ie 9th grade requires 10 hours, 10th
grade = 20 hours, 11th grade = 30 hours, 12th grade = 40 hours). I have
started a Student Service Card with a Service Hour Detail subform. I was
thinking that tabbed subforms titled with the applicable school years (since
a freshman would have different school year to track than a sophomore). What
is the easiest way at the beginning of the school year to add the freshman as
a group with the appropriate school years on the tabs. Also, can I somehow
have an automatic checkbox when the requirement has been met for each school
year.

Jeez when I started this and boasted to my coworkers that I was going to do
this, I thought it would be easy!! They keep asking where it is, and how
embarassed am I??

Thanks for any info you can give me. I just can't take another year of
spreadsheet hell and tracking 1200 students. HELP!

Stop, and step back a bit.

Forms are JUST TOOLS. You should start your design, not with the
Forms, but with a logical, normalized set of Tables; then design the
forms to fit the tables, not vice versa! I know it's very tempting to
plunge right into form design but it's pretty much guaranteed to give
you a flawed and difficult design.

Check out some of the links at

http://home.bendbroadband.com/conrad...resources.html

particularly the Database Design 101 links. At a glance, you will need
a table for Grades (with only four records), a table for Students, and
a table for Service; you would emphatically NOT add a new record when
a student graduates from being a freshman to being a sophomore
(instead just change that student's Grade field), nor would you store
in any table that the requirement has been met (as this can easily be
calculated on the fly from the hours-required vs. the hours-worked).


John W. Vinson[MVP]

On Tue, 14 Feb 2006 10:40:30 -0800, "camu"
wrote:

I'm sorry I did not give you enough details. I did develop tables and they
a Students, StudentService, Grades, Organizations,
SchoolYear, ServiceCategory, Student Status

The Grade table was developed as you said with the 4 grades and a second
field for service hours requirement per grade. The SchoolYear table has the
primary key of: 0506 for the 2005/06 school year, etc. That would designate
which school year to attribute the hours to as the data is entered.

I added an Organization table and Service Category table because I am asked
to report who we are serving.

So I am now faced with developing the forms and the clearest way to input
and present the data.

Also, I have been on every Access info page on the web. It has helped
immensely to get me this far but I am in the middle of knowing the very
basics and staring blankly at the event procedures, macros, etc. I can't find
much info move to the next step.

Have I made it any clearer? or have I confused you? Thanks for your response.

Sorry I've been so long getting back to you... and then only to tell
you "sorry, I'm going out of town for a week and won't be able to
reply".

I'd suggest you post a new thread, listing your Tables, their
relationships, and their Primary Keys; and - reasonably clearly - what
it is that you want to accomplish, and what you've already done to
accomplish it. One of the other volunteers should jump in to help.

Again... my apologies, this just got to be "sixth on the list of
five"!

John W. Vinson[MVP]