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Database Design
I am trying to build a database for equipment maintenance for a construction
company and I need help with almost everything. I am using Microsoft Access 2007 and I am confused. I have some tables built.. I have broke out heavy equipment versus light duty vehicles, rental equipment, parts used for maintenance. I think I should have a table with employees and what light duty vehicle they are assigned to. I can't seem to figure out how to move forward. I posted basically the same question October 23rd, but can't find the question. Thanks! |
#2
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Database Design
TC,
Don't know what application you are using to enter your questions in the newsgroup, but here is the link to the question you posted on the 23rd, and a response. http://www.microsoft.com/office/comm...&lang=en&cr=US In that original post, you mentioned that you are totally lost with Access. What are you using now to do what you want to do with Access? a spreadsheet? There are quite a few template databases already setup in Access or available for download from the Access templates website. You might want to browse through some of those: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/te...s/default.aspx do a search on "equipment" or something like that and see what you can find. ---- HTH Dale "TC" wrote: I am trying to build a database for equipment maintenance for a construction company and I need help with almost everything. I am using Microsoft Access 2007 and I am confused. I have some tables built.. I have broke out heavy equipment versus light duty vehicles, rental equipment, parts used for maintenance. I think I should have a table with employees and what light duty vehicle they are assigned to. I can't seem to figure out how to move forward. I posted basically the same question October 23rd, but can't find the question. Thanks! |
#3
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Database Design
In message , TC
writes I am trying to build a database for equipment maintenance for a construction company and I need help with almost everything. I am using Microsoft Access 2007 and I am confused. I have some tables built.. I have broke out heavy equipment versus light duty vehicles, rental equipment, parts used for maintenance. I think I should have a table with employees and what light duty vehicle they are assigned to. I can't seem to figure out how to move forward. I posted basically the same question October 23rd, but can't find the question. Step away from that computer! Now get a large sheet of paper a pencil and an eraser. On the paper draw a circle for each type of thing that your database needs to know about. Now add lines that connect different types of things. For instance one employee may assigned to a vehicle during their shift. You need a line from employee to shift and one from vehicle to shift. Because these are 1:many relationships draw a crows-foot symbol at the end the line at the many end, like -----. If you find that you have a many:many relationship then break the line in the middle and add an empty circle that has two 1:many relationships. The chances are that you will find out more about these empty entities and will end up giving them a name. When you have everything drawn on the diagram go away and have a beer or two, you will have earned it. Come back to the diagram a day or two later and decide whether it still makes sense to you. If it does then you have completed a very important document, an Entity Relationship Diagram. Specifically this is the Logical Data Structure ERD. When you get to convert these entities into tables you can create a Physical Data Structure ERD. Next take your yellow pad and write down what your system needs to know about each of those circles, the entities. Each of those entities is likely to become a table in your database and everything you have on your yellow pad is likely to become a field. For each entity you should look for a field or combination of fields that uniquely identifies each instance of the entity. These fields are "candidate keys" in your database tables. For instance the People table will likely hold a person's first-name and last-name and possibly a middle-name. Finding candidate keys for a People table is difficult, but someone may have done the hard work and given each employee a payroll number or something similar. Only when you have all of the entities linked by 1:many relationships should you start creating tables. One per entity. An experienced database analyst or someone who knows the data very well may be able to safely merge two entities into one table. Bear in mind that there is always a price to pay for moving away from the true logical data structure. If you don't know what the price will be then don't do it. -- Bernard Peek |
#4
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Database Design
TC wrote:
I am trying to build a database for equipment maintenance for a construction company and I need help with almost everything. Check out the Granite Fleet Manager in my sig below. It's running at a industrial construction company with 150 trucks, generators, pumps and such along 1000 pieces of miscellaneous equipment issued to job sites. Tony -- Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP Tony's Main MS Access pages - http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm Tony's Microsoft Access Blog - http://msmvps.com/blogs/access/ For a free, convenient utility to keep your users FEs and other files updated see http://www.autofeupdater.com/ Granite Fleet Manager http://www.granitefleet.com/ |
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