Combine Tables - Remove Duplicates and Add fields

[rockell333]

I have 4 or 5 tables. Most of the fields are exactly the name but they all have at least 1 to possibly 5 or six fields that are not in the other table.


Additionally there are some duplicates within the individual tables as well as across tables.

i.e.

I have a
Student Table - with all the info on the student as well as a column called student that identifies them as such however it does not have the columns parent, donor, appeal, designation.....
Parent Table - with all the info on the student as well as a column called parent that identifies them as such however it does not have the columns student, donor, appeal, designation.....
Donor Table - with all the info on the student as well as a column called donor that identifies them as such however it does not have the columns student, parent, appeal, designation.....
Appeal Table - with all the info on the student as well as a column called appeal that identifies them as such however it does not have the columns student, parent, donor, designation.....

A person can be within one of these tables more than once but with all the same information.
A person can also fall into all of these parameters so they could be on every table with the same information in addition to the missing columns,=.


Question 1 : what is the best way to dedupe and delete the individual tables (they all have account numbers)
Question 2: I was thinking create a new table with all the columns available, however how do i dedupe across tables while populating the additional columns from each?

Sorry for the length. Let me know if you need additional information

[Homegrownandy]

you only need the student information in one place. I'm not sure if that's what you're asking to delete. Do you understand normalization?

[rockell333]

Note: I need all the records in one table.. but only once with all unique information.

[Homegrownandy]

I'm not sure but it seems to me you need to work on the structure, What are you trying t o achieve with the database? what will it contain? what will end users be using it for?

[rockell333]

im thinking you are not really understanding fully. The structure is how it is as it is a work in progress. If I had access to the back end i could pull this as i wanted to, however i do not at this time.

For this i am the end use for a one time only mailing. The mailing needs to include donors, students and parents and we need to know which they are whether they are whether they all of them or just one. So really i just need to dedupe each separate table, then create one table with only unique contacts including not only the matching fields but the unique ones as well.

[Homegrownandy]

okay, but a student can have the same name. If you apply a delete to anything duplicated you risk losing data.

[rockell333]

maybe i didnt mention it. they all have a contact number. assigned in our database i will be matching solely on that for both the dedupe/delete of the individual tables as well as when combining?

[rockell333]

the donor, student, parent etc records are all attached to the same contact object and contact number. it is just that the other objects are not connected in salesforce so i have to pull everything separately. Only from the back end can i connect them.

[rockell333]

ok i solved it. I created structure only copies of each table and used the id as the primary key for each. then i appended each table with its corresponding table. removing the dupes in the individual tables.

Then i created another structure only table with all the fields unique to each table using the id as the primary key for each and appended that table with each of the individual tables.

Then I just ran an update for all the unique fields.

[Homegrownandy]

I'm glad you fixed your problem.