Property sales and rentals project

[dannybhoy]

Hi all,



Im currently doing a degree in Business and for our IT module we are doing access2007 and excel 2007, for our 100% Continuous assessment we have been asked 2 come up with a simple database for a business . I have been given a estate agent / property rental business .
We have to do it ourselves and present it to our lecturer in April to prove we did it and I have allready come up with what tables I want etc It only has to be at a basic level we have to demonstrate say 3 types of each query etc and some forms and reports.........I have a few books here on access and have been reading up on the rules etc with regards to normalization and primary keys etc If im honest I kind of get it but without the sufficient database design experience there is a stumbling block that I need clarification on if it is going to work and Im only have a week now to get the database side of things completed.

I have attatched my relationships screen shot and you will see i have seperate tables for rental properties and sales properties as every house is different and there is different fileds with regards to selling and renting . However I want each house to obviously be assigned to an employee who is responsible for it so I added a primary key on employee ID in employee tbl which is linked to a foreign key in each property table labelled employee Ref: ..........I have referential integrity .....So my question is will this work? Before I spend hours populating my tables am I setting myself up for a load of problems whe I begin to query? Any suggestions would be most welcome and feel free to slam me for my incompetence it will only help me learn.........

[orange]

There are sample data models and tutorials here
http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_...tals/index.htm

Best advice I can give is to get a real handle on relational database design and normalization -- do the reading and work through examples. "Sort of get it " -won't cut it. You're in the learning stage now, so learn it -- lot's of samples.
Spend your time understanding normalization and design - the queries are secondary to good structures that meet the business needs.

Build a model
Get some representative data
Test and retest/adjust the model as needed
Once your model is done, build your final tables
..
.. now do the specific queries.

Good luck.

[dannybhoy]

Thanks a lot for the advice but I still dont know if the database I have built is ok or not ....I had an attatchment showing my relationships, I know I need to understand things more but I still have not got an answer to my question

[RuralGuy]

So you are hoping one of us will save you from loads of problems when you begin to query the tables, even though most of us have experienced loads of problems when we first began to work with Access, huh? Good luck on that! FWIW, I don't see anything glaringly wrong with the structure and populating the tables will not be a waste of time. It is fairly easy to restructure tables if it becomes necessary.

[dannybhoy]

well I appreciate your reply i suppose the best way to learn is by making mistakes anyway

[RuralGuy]

Experience is by far the best teacher.

[orange]

Thanks a lot for the advice but I still dont know if the database I have built is ok or not ....I had an attatchment showing my relationships, I know I need to understand things more but I still have not got an answer to my question

Well you could compare your tables to the model, then try and reconcile/understand the differences. As RuralGuy says you can always restructure even if you populate the tables. And, for sure, experience and working through some restructuring are very, very good teachers.

[dannybhoy]

Yeah thanks I think they are good to go gonna populate now and try a few queries fingers crossed ! Oh one more thing I have heard on another forum that using a combo box when poulating to say choose house,apartment,studio flat, bungalow >s a bad idea and can lead to problems is this true?

[RuralGuy]

Oh one more thing I have heard on another forum that using a combo box when poulating to say choose house,apartment,studio flat, bungalow is a bad idea and can lead to problems is this true?

Not true unless those ComboBoxes are at the table level as Lookup Fields. On forms they are just fine. http://www.mvps.org/access/lookupfields.htm

[dannybhoy]

so not true when it comes to populating tables no ? thanks appreciate the help !

[RuralGuy]

Is this thread ready for you to use the Thread Tools and mark as Solved?

[dannybhoy]

well I anticipate I may have a problem when it comes to queries so no its not fully solved yet........wont be long now and it will be cheers