Hi all, I just want some opinions on best practices in this scenario. I have two data sources coming into my database, one from excel and one from quickbooks. I have one table for each of these line item data sources because the fields vary wildly. There are some common elements like "Line Item Description" and "Heading", but aside from that, they are too different to store the info together because I need to collect different information on each. My question is how to store the data that relates to both of these tables. For each line item in both tables, I need to store 60 months worth of data (ID, DataMonth, DataValue). I need to eventually display the info together. Does it make more sense to:
(1) have two separate data tables, join each to their respective Line Items table, then union them
(2) store the data in one table, separate it to join it to its respective line items table, union it after the fact
(3) try harder to figure out a good way to put all of the line items from excel and quickbooks in one table even though these items aren't used together at all unless the data gets involved and I need different fields depending on which data source it comes from
(4) something else that's totally obvious and way better that I didn't think of.