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#21
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Hostel Database Setup
In that case, she would need to know more about the clients to distinguish
them... "Jamie Collins" wrote in message ups.com... Amy Blankenship wrote: 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 I disagree. The OP specified "I want to know how many different individuals have walked through my doors". Jamie. -- |
#22
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Hostel Database Setup
Gees Louise. All she wants to do is track what countries her clients are
from... Well no what the OP actually wants is.... To present real and true financial and marketing data to perspective buyers of my business. To answer my guests questions, eg, "How many guests have you had?" "What country are the majority of your guests from?" "How many Swiss visitors have you had?" "Are most of your guests under 30?" etc. Did you read that, I think the OP is more concerned about data consistency than you are. She's not running Fort Knox. Who gives a .... if it is a small business it is very important to the OP every bit as important as data is to an international bank. Any database that has financial implications is VERY important to the owners of that data, you may not care but they do. -- Slainte Craig Alexander Morrison Crawbridge Data (Scotland) Limited "Amy Blankenship" wrote in message ... |
#23
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Hostel Database Setup
Amy Blankenship wrote: In that case, she would need to know more about the clients to distinguish them... That's the point I was trying to make when I said, "Another approach could be to record their passport number, with perhaps a different identiifer for locals." Jamie. -- |
#24
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Hostel Database Setup
When I woke up this morning and saw that there were over 20 postings to my
op, I thought, Oh no, what have I done, asking for professional help on this site and now I have many developers offering me services and others reprimanding them for advertising on this site! Imagine my surprise and glee when I saw that all of these responses where still actually related to my original post! Thanks guys, but now I am more confused than ever. My original post said what I want, but it didn't go into detail about what I currently have. I will post back with a better description of my current set up, and hopefully get some help in real world language. Are any of you available by phone? It's really cheap to call from here. Thanks so much, Andrea "Jamie Collins" wrote: 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? Another approach could be to record their passport number, with perhaps a different identiifer for locals. Also note that NationalityID might be better as country of residence using the ISO 3166 standard country codes. Jamie. -- |
#25
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Hostel Database Setup
That's one way to do it. What if someone changes his/her citizenship :-)?
"Jamie Collins" wrote in message ups.com... Amy Blankenship wrote: In that case, she would need to know more about the clients to distinguish them... That's the point I was trying to make when I said, "Another approach could be to record their passport number, with perhaps a different identiifer for locals." Jamie. -- |
#26
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Hostel Database Setup
I could talk by Microsoft Messenger. E.mail me at amy at magnoliamultimedia
dot com, and I'll send you details. -Amy "andreainpanama" wrote in message ... When I woke up this morning and saw that there were over 20 postings to my op, I thought, Oh no, what have I done, asking for professional help on this site and now I have many developers offering me services and others reprimanding them for advertising on this site! Imagine my surprise and glee when I saw that all of these responses where still actually related to my original post! Thanks guys, but now I am more confused than ever. My original post said what I want, but it didn't go into detail about what I currently have. I will post back with a better description of my current set up, and hopefully get some help in real world language. Are any of you available by phone? It's really cheap to call from here. Thanks so much, Andrea "Jamie Collins" wrote: 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? Another approach could be to record their passport number, with perhaps a different identiifer for locals. Also note that NationalityID might be better as country of residence using the ISO 3166 standard country codes. Jamie. -- |
#27
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Hostel Database Setup
"Craig Alexander Morrison" wrote in message ... Gees Louise. All she wants to do is track what countries her clients are from... Well no what the OP actually wants is.... To present real and true financial and marketing data to perspective buyers of my business. To answer my guests questions, eg, "How many guests have you had?" "What country are the majority of your guests from?" "How many Swiss visitors have you had?" "Are most of your guests under 30?" etc. Did you read that, I think the OP is more concerned about data consistency than you are. And I think you're not at all concerned about actually answering Andrea's question. If you were, you would address her and her question rather than expending a lot of energy trying to demonstrate that I gave her a wrong answer. If you are SO concerned for her and her data integrity, post a solution she can use rather than nitpicking at mine. Otherwise stay out of the way so I can direct my energy to helping her fine tune rather than responding to your posts which have ZERO point in the context of this thread other than to hear yourself talk. |
#28
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Hostel Database Setup
I am not aware if there is something like an Access Jobs board. Maybe
someone else has more information on that. "andreainpanama" wrote in message ... Thank you for such a detailed response but I must admit that I got lost. I will try to get a little further along in my thinking process and post again. The truth is that I think I am going to need some professional help with this project. (someone to do it for me!) Any recommendations of how I can get cheap development help on line? "Amy Blankenship" wrote: Try this: Clients ======= ClientID LastName FirstName NationalityID Rooms ======= RoomID RoomNo NumberofBeds etc. RoomStay ======== StayID RoomID StayBegin StayEnd ClientRoomStay ========= StayID ClientID IsMainClient Nationalities ========= NationalityID NationalityName etc. Then you want to make a Rooms form. Insert a new subform into your Rooms form that uses RoomStay as a data source. That will need controls for the stay beginning and the stay end, but the RoomID will be set by the LinkMaster/LinkChild relationship between Rooms and RoomStay. If you used a wizard, it would have inserted a visible control for that field. Leave it on the form, but set its visible property to false. Also hide the StayID field, since users won't need to set it. You'll also want to insert a subform control on the RoomStay subform. Use ClientRoomStay as the data source for it. Its StayID will be set by the LinkMaster/LinkChild relationship between it and RoomStay. Again, hide the StayID field. Leave the IsMainClient check box as is. Now things get a little tricky. If you inserted the subform with a wizard, it probably gave you a control for ClientID. Select FormatChange To, and change it to a combobox control instead. Open the properties sheet for the combobox and go to the data tab. Click the ... on the row source line and then show the Client table. Double-click ClientID, LastName, and FirstName to move those fields to the query grid. Close the window, saving the change. Switch to the Format tab and set the column count to 3. Set the column widths to 0"; 1"; 1". Now click in the little box in the upper left of your ClientRoomStay Subform. Change its default view to continuous form. What you have will now allow you to select your clients from the combobox and associate them with a particular stay in a room as well as specifying if a client is the main client. You can manually enter clients in a different form, or you can use the not in list event of the combobox to automatically pop up a new client form if the name you enter in the combobox is not in the database. I am not going through the steps for that here, as it has been covered on many occasions. HTH; Amy "andreainpanama" wrote in message ... Thanks to all of you for all of your help. I have a small backpackers hostel and I am currently working on a database to help me keep track of all of my guests. These are the two basic design issues that I am running into. Issue 1. Sometimes, there are 2 or 3 guests staying to gether in a private room (as opposed to individuals staying in dorm beds which are always registered separately). Since we rent the private rooms by the room, groups are considered to be one booking and one stay in one room, even though there are three individuals. I want to keep track not only of the guest that is the official guest in my register (the one who pays for the room), but the 2 people who are accompanying him. Why? Because I a) want to know how many different individuals have walked through my doors b) I want to know the nationalities of every individual and c) Many times one of the people who have stayed as a friend of a guest in a private room, will come back on their own a few days later, and then they might become the paying guest or an individual in a dorm. Therefore, I want a way that every single person has a client ID number. I have managed to do this rather haphazardly...by having a table with the following fields, MAIN GUEST 1(TITLE) clientid1 lastname1 firstname1 nationality1 etc1 FRIEND2 (TITLE) clientid2 lastname2 firstname2 nationality2 etc2 FRIEND 3 (TITLE) clientid3 lastname3 firstname3 nationality3 etc3 And I just go in and manually assign a number to each person. Tried using subforms, could't get them to work. Didn't use autonumbers because I wasn't sure how to deal with the following Issue 2 below..... Issue 2. Repeat Bookings. I currently have a booking table which allows each guest to have a booking with dates, prices, room choice, etc. How do I deal with repeat bookings of the same person? How do I structure tables and forms to deal with the infinite amount of booking data that might apply to one guest since I have no idea if a person will come back 0 times, or 3 times or 65 times, or if they will be in the same room the next night, etc. How do I limit my table and form size? How can I pull up a client number say 55, and then enter new booking records? Should I do this with individual booking tables? And once again, are my problems solve with autonumbers? Finally, let me explain why I want this data... To present real and true financial and marketing data to perspective buyers of my business. To answer my guests questions, eg, "How many guests have you had?" "What country are the majority of your guests from?" "How many Swiss visitors have you had?" "Are most of your guests under 30?" etc. I would really appreciate someone's opinions. (PS, I am a relative newbie, and know nothing about programming language.) AndreainPanama you can see my webpage at www.purplehousehostel.com |
#29
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Hostel Database Setup
I am of the "published" opinion the database design by email is dangerous if
not actually irresponsible. I am also quite happy to point out when someone is giving information that will harm a design, such as your lack of measures, which I had initially only suspected, to prevent data duplication and endanger integrity and consistency. I have since had to correct a series of further errors from you and me (g). -- Slainte Craig Alexander Morrison Crawbridge Data (Scotland) Limited "Amy Blankenship" wrote in message ... "Craig Alexander Morrison" wrote in message ... Gees Louise. All she wants to do is track what countries her clients are from... Well no what the OP actually wants is.... To present real and true financial and marketing data to perspective buyers of my business. To answer my guests questions, eg, "How many guests have you had?" "What country are the majority of your guests from?" "How many Swiss visitors have you had?" "Are most of your guests under 30?" etc. Did you read that, I think the OP is more concerned about data consistency than you are. And I think you're not at all concerned about actually answering Andrea's question. If you were, you would address her and her question rather than expending a lot of energy trying to demonstrate that I gave her a wrong answer. If you are SO concerned for her and her data integrity, post a solution she can use rather than nitpicking at mine. Otherwise stay out of the way so I can direct my energy to helping her fine tune rather than responding to your posts which have ZERO point in the context of this thread other than to hear yourself talk. |
#30
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Hostel Database Setup
Andrea,
Database Design by Email is dangerous. I would suggest you consider a few approaches: 1. Learn a bit about Relational Database design. (The main thing to concentrate on is the process of Relational Data Analysis (aka Normalisation)) Come back to the newsgroup with specific questions about particular problems with the database AND the application(s) 2. Consider employing a local developer. 3. Consider employing a developer who can at least make a personal visit to collect the user requirements and collate the data sources (current forms, reports, spreadsheets, register) and sit down and talk through your requirements. 4 Consider employing a remote developer In cases 2, 3 and 4 get references, check with their previous clients and look at samples of the work they have done. There are many many cowboys around who be little more than users themselves who think they know what they are doing. Whatever approach make sure you own the source code so that you can tweak the design in future either in-house or with another developer. 5. You could try the newsgroups but they are really best suited to an answer to a specific question If you go with this approach make sure you evaluate all the answers and note any disagreements between other posters, this will assume that you have learnt a little bit more about Relational Database Design. If you are fairly confident in the process of creating forms and reports you may just get the developer to create the database and you can do the applications. 6. Check to see if anyone in the same line as you has done something similar and see if you can make a mutually acceptable arrangement. BTW Concentrate on getting the database design correct (or as correct as you can) before worrying about Forms, Reports etc. You cannot get out of a database what you do not put in. Let your watchwords be Data Integrity and Data Consistency and ensure that the developer is as concerned as you about the accuracy of your data. Duplicate data is a killer to any system, and more so if it contains important financial information. BTW Keep this a secret, designing a good relational database is actually rather straightfoward, if you understand the business (or rather the data and how the business uses the data) and how to normalise data. Using Access to create the applications becomes so much easier once you have a good relational database design . Access is still one of the best tools to design applications that use relational databases. -- Slainte Craig Alexander Morrison Crawbridge Data (Scotland) Limited "andreainpanama" wrote in message ... When I woke up this morning and saw that there were over 20 postings to my op, I thought, Oh no, what have I done, asking for professional help on this site and now I have many developers offering me services and others reprimanding them for advertising on this site! Imagine my surprise and glee when I saw that all of these responses where still actually related to my original post! Thanks guys, but now I am more confused than ever. My original post said what I want, but it didn't go into detail about what I currently have. I will post back with a better description of my current set up, and hopefully get some help in real world language. Are any of you available by phone? It's really cheap to call from here. Thanks so much, Andrea "Jamie Collins" wrote: 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? Another approach could be to record their passport number, with perhaps a different identiifer for locals. Also note that NationalityID might be better as country of residence using the ISO 3166 standard country codes. Jamie. -- |
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