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#1
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Consolidating contacts.
I'm in the process of designing and creating a database to keep track of
people, much like a contacts database, but a little bit more complex. Currently I have it planned so that there is a students table and an agent table. Ultimately I need to keep track of emails from Outlook through a linked table containing the emails. (So I'm filing emails digitally rather than printing them off.) My question is if it is possible to consolidate the agents table with the students table. The students table contains a lot more information than the agent table So I was not sure if it would be practical to combine the two directly and have many of the fields (those that are agents) end up remaining null. Any help would be appreciated. Please let me know if any clarification is needed. Student table fields are as follows: StudentID (autonumber) AgencyBranch LastName FirstName DOB PermanentAddress PermanentTelephone Mobile FaxNumber ParentE-mail CountryOfCitizenship AlternateAddress AlternateTelephone DateCompleteApplicationReceived ApplicationReceivedFromAgency ApplicationReceivedFromStudent Photo StudentType Session/SemesterOfInterest Session/SemesterofInitialEnrollment IDNumber The Agents table contains the following fields: ContactID_AN ContactType AgencyBranch LastName FirstName PhoneNumber FaxNumber MobileNumber Photo |
#2
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Consolidating contacts.
On May 13, 5:33*pm, EdEarnshaw
wrote: I'm in the process of designing and creating a database to keep track of people, much like a contacts database, but a little bit more complex. Currently I have it planned so that there is a students table and an agent table. Ultimately I need to keep track of emails from Outlook through a linked table containing *the emails. (So I'm filing emails digitally rather than printing them off.) My question is if it is possible to consolidate the agents table with the students table. The students table contains a lot more information than the agent table So I was not sure if it would be practical to combine the two directly and have many of the fields (those that are agents) end up remaining null. Any help would be appreciated. Please let me know if any clarification is needed. Student table fields are as follows: StudentID (autonumber) AgencyBranch LastName FirstName DOB PermanentAddress PermanentTelephone Mobile FaxNumber ParentE-mail CountryOfCitizenship AlternateAddress AlternateTelephone DateCompleteApplicationReceived ApplicationReceivedFromAgency ApplicationReceivedFromStudent Photo StudentType Session/SemesterOfInterest Session/SemesterofInitialEnrollment IDNumber The Agents table contains the following fields: ContactID_AN ContactType AgencyBranch LastName FirstName PhoneNumber FaxNumber MobileNumber Photo Before I would consider merging them, I'd have to ask a few questions... Do the Agent and Student participate in the same relationships? If they do, then it makes sense to put them in the same table. If they don't share more than a few attributes, then I wouldn't. |
#3
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Consolidating contacts.
This helps actually. Thank you.
"Piet Linden" wrote: On May 13, 5:33 pm, EdEarnshaw wrote: I'm in the process of designing and creating a database to keep track of people, much like a contacts database, but a little bit more complex. Currently I have it planned so that there is a students table and an agent table. Ultimately I need to keep track of emails from Outlook through a linked table containing the emails. (So I'm filing emails digitally rather than printing them off.) My question is if it is possible to consolidate the agents table with the students table. The students table contains a lot more information than the agent table So I was not sure if it would be practical to combine the two directly and have many of the fields (those that are agents) end up remaining null. Any help would be appreciated. Please let me know if any clarification is needed. Student table fields are as follows: StudentID (autonumber) AgencyBranch LastName FirstName DOB PermanentAddress PermanentTelephone Mobile FaxNumber ParentE-mail CountryOfCitizenship AlternateAddress AlternateTelephone DateCompleteApplicationReceived ApplicationReceivedFromAgency ApplicationReceivedFromStudent Photo StudentType Session/SemesterOfInterest Session/SemesterofInitialEnrollment IDNumber The Agents table contains the following fields: ContactID_AN ContactType AgencyBranch LastName FirstName PhoneNumber FaxNumber MobileNumber Photo Before I would consider merging them, I'd have to ask a few questions... Do the Agent and Student participate in the same relationships? If they do, then it makes sense to put them in the same table. If they don't share more than a few attributes, then I wouldn't. |
#4
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Consolidating contacts.
On May 13, 6:38*pm, EdEarnshaw
wrote: This helps actually. Thank you. "Piet Linden" wrote: On May 13, 5:33 pm, EdEarnshaw wrote: I'm in the process of designing and creating a database to keep track of people, much like a contacts database, but a little bit more complex. Currently I have it planned so that there is a students table and an agent table. Ultimately I need to keep track of emails from Outlook through a linked table containing *the emails. (So I'm filing emails digitally rather than printing them off.) My question is if it is possible to consolidate the agents table with the students table. The students table contains a lot more information than the agent table So I was not sure if it would be practical to combine the two directly and have many of the fields (those that are agents) end up remaining null.. Any help would be appreciated. Please let me know if any clarification is needed. Student table fields are as follows: StudentID (autonumber) AgencyBranch LastName FirstName DOB PermanentAddress PermanentTelephone Mobile FaxNumber ParentE-mail CountryOfCitizenship AlternateAddress AlternateTelephone DateCompleteApplicationReceived ApplicationReceivedFromAgency ApplicationReceivedFromStudent Photo StudentType Session/SemesterOfInterest Session/SemesterofInitialEnrollment IDNumber The Agents table contains the following fields: ContactID_AN ContactType AgencyBranch LastName FirstName PhoneNumber FaxNumber MobileNumber Photo Before I would consider merging them, I'd have to ask a few questions... Do the Agent and Student participate in the same relationships? *If they do, then it makes sense to put them in the same table. *If they don't share more than a few attributes, then I wouldn't.- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text - Ed, just an FYI... Rebecca Riordan has an article on Access Web on subclassing... if you ever get there. It's helpful if you have IS-A hierarchies... For example, if you have a superclass, like "Vehicle", and then subclasses, e.g., "car", "truck", "motorcycle" and you need to keep track of a lot of the same attributes and then some special or custom attributes for the subclass. http://www.mvps.org/access/tables/tbl0013.htm |
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