I'm running for office and have created a web app for tracking my door knocks to voters at their homes. The database contains a table called voters that contains all the necessary information about voters in my community.
I'd like to add a new feature to track donors to my campaign. Not all of these donors live in the community and do not vote in the district where I'm running for office. I do not need to track the same kind of info for these individuals as I do for the voters so I'm going to place these individuals into a table called nonvoters.
Now, the individuals in my "voters" table can also make donations, and I want to track those as well.
To track the donations from both voters and nonvoters, I'd like to set up a new table called "donations." This table would contain the appropriate details about the donation.
But I'm uncertain as to what the best structure is for linking the donations table to the "voters" and "nonvoters" table. If I create a column called voter_id in the table to key it to the donors information, there's no way to know which table that ID refers to. So do I set up two columns, nonvoter_id and voter_id and insert the ID into the applicable column depending on whether the donor is a voter? This seems weird.
Or maybe I create a column in both the voters and nonvoters table called donor_id that I can use to link my data in the donations table. If I went this route, it seems like I'd have to do a some behind the scenes work to ensure the donor_id was unique and was keyed to the data inside the donations table.
Or maybe there are other approaches I'm not familiar with. Any guidance is appreciated.
I would use a single table for voters and non-voters, let's say persons. You can have a flag in the persons table that indicates if the person is a voter or you may even derive this from their address (if that's possible).
I would create a donations table and link each donation to a person (or persons) in the persons table using the id in the persons table. If a donation can be given by multiple people, then you will need a 3rd connection table with person id and donation id as 2 fields. These 2 fields would be the primary key for the connection table.
Related
In Microsoft Access I have three tables: order table, customer table and product table. My order table pulls in both customer contact and product information. Every now and then I need to update either the customer address. When doing so, I only want the new address to appear on future orders. I don't want Access to update previous orders with an address that was not originally affiliated with that order. I also want to maintain a list of active and past addresses on the customer list. Please advise on the best ways for setting up the customer table and how to retain customer contact information on the order table.
To do this you need to take the customer address out of the Customer table and keep it in a separate CustomerAddress table. This new table has a primary key (of course), a foreign key back to the Customer table, all the address fields that you want to maintain history of and a Current flag (Yes/No). Your Order table then points directly to the CustomerAddress table instead of the Customer table (you can get from Order to Customer because of the FK link on CustomerAddress to Customer). Now your fun starts! You have to maintain your CustomerAddress table in such a way that for each Customer ID you should only have one Address record where Current is True.
The other alternative is to not have a Current flag on the CustomerAddress table, but instead have a CurrentAddress field in your Customer table - this ensures that only one Address can ever be the current one for a Customer. However you can't enforce both the CurrentAddress integrity and the CustomerAddress foreign key - you can't set the value of CurrentAddress until you've added the Address record, so Customer record has to be able to exist with NULL CurrentAddress (although I suppose you could have a dummy 'Not set' CustomerAddress record).
The simple method is to store the current customer information with the order.
The extended method is to store the customer table(s) as temporal tables, either using a custom method or a native as - for example - offered by the newest versions of SQL Server. Look up the term Temporal database for more information.
I have a users table and at the moment a table for storing the users information. The users have a role of buyer or as seller. where the seller has some additional fields that the buyer doesn't have.
Now im wondering what will be a good approach to use. create a table for the users information where i refer to the users id, or two separated tables. One table for the buyers information referring to the user id and one for the sellers information with the exta fields referring to the user id. Where you fill the table according to the users role.
There will be millions of users inside this table so thats something to keep in mind here.
Any help will be appreciated.
Generally you put all the information both types of users share (and that fits on one records of course) in the User table. Then if you need more information by type create a table for that type. If you only need more information right now for sellers, then create a sellers table. If buyers also have specialized fields, then create a buyers table. If however, you do not at this time have any specialized fields to add for the buyers table, then you may not need one at this time. It can be added later if your data model changes.
If this table (these tables) is going to be in a one-to-one relationship with the User table, then make sure to create the Userid as both the FK (to users)and the PK of the child table to maintain data integrity.
You should use two tables, one for users and the other for associates
users
+id
user_name
...
associates
+id
user_id
assoc_type //buyer or seller
...
I'm working on a very simple DB.
Imagine I've table customer and table seller.
The customer is able to request a quotation for some products
There will be a simple form that allow to customers to select products and submit the quotation.
Now, should I create table : "Quotation" and store all quotations (with id_quotation..etc)?
Thank you all
Without knowing all of the business rules that govern the requirements of this database, perhaps the following design will help to answer your question and explain a few concepts in the process.
In database terms, an entity is a person, place, or thing about which we want to collect and store data. From your description we can already see two entities: seller and customer. This is important since the entities we identify conceptually become database tables in their own right.
The seller table should contain data applicable only to sellers. Thus, the qualities (attributes) about sellers that we want to store become columns in our seller table. Each row (record) in the seller table represents an individual seller. Each individual seller is uniquely identified in the seller table with a unique value stored in it's primary key column, which we can name seller_id.
A simplified version of such a table could look like this:
In a similar manner, the customer table should contain data only applicable to customers. The qualities (attributes) about customers that we wish to store become the columns in the customer table. Each row (record) in the customer table represents an individual customer. Each individual customer is uniquely identified in that table with a unique value in it's primary key column, which we can declare as customer_id.
A simplified version of this table:
I'm guessing the business rules state that any customer is able to request any number of products, from any seller, any number of times...since surely any seller would want as many sales and customers as possible!
How can we express and record the interactions (relationship) between seller and customer?
This is done with a new kind of entity: a composite entity. It becomes a new table, having it's own primary key, and contains seller_id and customer_id as foreign keys. The foreign keys in this table connect (relate) the seller table to the customer table.
We can name this new table quotation (if that is your preferred name). Each row of this table is intended to capture and record each and every individual transaction between a customer and a seller. The columns (attributes) of this table are the data that apply to a transaction between a customer and seller, such as amount or date of sale.
A very simplified version of this composite entity:
Note that the foreign key values that exist in this table must already exist in their respective tables as a primary key value. That is, a foreign key value cannot be entered into this table unless it exists already as a primary key value in it's own table. This is important, and it is called referential integrity - it ensures that there is no record of a customer purchasing from a non-existent seller, etc.
In the example above we can see that Builder B requested a quotation from Acme Construction in the amount of $3500.00. They then requested another quotation at another time for the amount of $1800.00. What else does it reveal? All existing customers have ordered something. Acme Lumber has not made a sale at all (yet), etc.
A design such as this enables the database to store any number of transactions between sellers and customers. Likewise, it supports the addition of any number of new customers and sellers, even if they have not sold or purchased anything yet. Queries can be run that reveal which sellers have sold the most or least, and so on.
Good luck with your studies!
I would like to set an auto-update relationship between fields in two tables. One table contains information on the team and team leader, while the other table contains the team member name list with team and leader information included. I want the second table updated when the first table is updated (the team name is fixed and the team members always stay in the same team, while the team leader might be changed).
I set the team name as the primary key in the first table, and member name and team name as the primary key in the second table.
I want to use the relationship in Access, but it always shows: no unique index ... for primary table. Any instructions or help with any misunderstanding of the use of relationships is appreciated.
Since the Team Name is fixed, I would suggest creating a Team_ID field in both tables. Give each team an ID (it doesn't really matter what ID they get, so long as you're consistent across both tables) numbered 1 to however many teams you have.
Set the primary key in both tables to be Team_ID.
Set up a 1-to-Many relationship between the two tables, since you can have several team members on each team. Set that relationship up to be Cascading, and it will automatically update the second table when the first table is updated.
Also, I completely agree with ElectricLlama's statement above. Normalize your tables so you're only using each field a minimum number of times. Your first table should have Team_ID, Team_Name and Team_Leader, and your second table should have Team_ID and Team_Member. When you need to see the leader's info, join the two tables on Team_ID and bring in the necessary fields from each table.
I had to implement the following into my database:
The activities that users engage in. Each activity can have a name with up to 80 characters, and only distinct activities should be stored. That is, if two different users like “Swimming”, then the activity “Swimming” should only be stored once as a string.
Which activities each individual user engages in. Note that a user can have more than one hobby!
So I have to implement tables for this purpose and I must also make any modifications to existing tables if and as required and implement any keys and foreign key relationships needed.
All this must be stored with minimal amount of storage, i.e., you must choose the appropriate data types from the MySQL manual. You may assume that new activities will be added frequently, that activities will almost never be removed, and that the total number of distinct activities may reach 100,000.
So I already have a 'User' table with 'user_id' as my primary key.
MY SOLUTION TO THIS:
Create a table called 'Activities' and have 'activity_id' as PK (mediumint(5) ) and 'activity' as storing hobbies (varchar(80)) then I can create another table called 'Link' and use the 'user_id' FK from user table and the 'activity_id' FK from the 'Activities' table to show user with the activities that they like to do.
Is my approach to this question right? Is there another way I can do this to make it more efficient?
How would I show if one user pursues more than one activity in the foreign key table 'Link'?
Your idea is the correct, and only(?) way.. it's called a many to many relationship.
Just to reiterate what you're proposing is that you'll have a user table, and this will have a userid, then an activity table with an activityid.
To form the relationship you'll have a 3rd table, which for performance sake doesn't require a primary key however you should index both columns (userid and activityid)
In your logic when someone enters an activity name, pull all records from the activity table, check whether entered value exists, if not add to table and get back the new activityid and then add an entry to the user_activity table linking the activityid to the userid.
If it already exists just add an entry linking that activity id to the userid.
So your approach is right, the final question just indicates you should google for 'many to many' relationships for some more info if needed.