Database for 4h club and yearly fair

[lbaumeister]

I am a moderate to advance user of excel and a beginner at Access. I volunteer to take care of records for our annual fair for 4H. The information is the members, the project animals they weigh-in/check-in each year, the classes the animals will then be placed into depending on type and weight, the placings the kids earn with the animals and then last but not least, produce a sale bill for the auction at the end of the show based on the placings earned during the show. Making this work with a very complicated spreadsheet, but would like to move to access for easier way to enter the data each year and produce the classes, etc. Just having a hard time picturing the relationships to figure out the best way to enter the data. Wondering if anyone could point me to a sample database and/or tutorials that could possibly have similar traits? Thanks

[alansidman]

Start here to understand data normalization and design considerations.

http://r937.com/relational.html

Here is a link to database schemas that may help you sort out your requirements also

http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_models/

[ranman256]

No but it's not hard.
tMembers table
MemID (autoNum)
firstName
LastName
etc

tAnimal table
AniID (autoNum)
memID (long)
name
breed
etc

tClasses table

tResults table

[lbaumeister]

Thanks. I started with the membership and animals. The part I am having a hard time figuring out is the years. Should I have a different table that indicates each fair year? The same kid may participate each year. It's a new animal each year and dependent on the type of animal will determine classes.

[ranman256]

Yes , tFairs table
Year
etc

TAttend table
Year
memID
aniID