Hey all,
I didn't see a newbie area so I'll do a quick intro. Most of my database experience is old, really old as in R:Base. I have done a few single-table applications in Access so I do understand the basics of tables, forms, reports, etc. I'm now starting to design a database at my present employer which will print a "smart drawing" that will in essence be a one-page report showing data for one record (i.e. a part number). Now we have four different basic types of part numbers and we would like the report and the data to be different for each part family. Am I best off making different tables for the different types of part families or is there some way I can control the fields that are used based on part type.
Just as an example, all part families would have the fields customer, part number, revision, base material, part type and a few others. But "Part type #1" would have Core Size and a few other fields that the other part types wouldn't have and so on.
I'm leaning towards just making different tables for each one since they all have a unique report but just thought I'd check if that's really the right approach.
Thanks!
BB