DB design advice (warning: beginner content!)

[Rattykins]

Evening ladies and gentlemen.

New to both the forums and access, but despite both, I have a bit of a project. <grin>



I need to make a bilingual database for maintaining and retrieving business segment and product names for stock reports. Though the db will be mostly static and updated only periodically, I am at a bit of a loss as to how best to break down the tables for what I want to do (ultimate, design a search function). In summary:

I have a list of analysts who's contact information I would like to maintain.
Each analyst covers a specific number of stocks. One or two analysts will cover a number of stocks (a many-to-many relationship?)
Each stock has a ticker unique ticker number (our likely primary key), an official company name in two languages.
The most important bit is the following: each stock also has a bilingual list of business segments I'd like to record in two languages as well.

I guess I'm just a bit flummoxed and don't know where to begin. Essentially, I'd like a relational DB based on the above where I can:

Input a ticker number and have access retrieve:
The relevant analysts and their contact information
The business associated with the ticker number and its two official names.
The business segments (again, two languages) associated with company (and by extension, ticker number).

Any tips as to how to begin? (other than having massive excel spreadsheets of all this info, of course)

Much obliged!

Rattykins

[orange]

Why would you think someone here might suggest spreadsheets?

You might start with some database concepts.

Here are some free video tutorials.
These free video tutorials describe the processes of data modelling, normalization and entity relationship diagramming. There are other videos, but this group is by the same presenter and covers an example situation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiVq8M5DBkk Logical data modeling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGMwuOtRfqU Candidate key

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiB-BKCzS_I Normalization

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ47btpjAhA Normalization example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Wg2fZENK0 1st Normal form

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vji0pfliHZI 2nd Normal form

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH-QR7t-kMo 3rd Normal form

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1GaaGHHAqM E_R Diagramming

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXAGQ8vmhCY ERD Part 2

The first few topics at this site are well worth the read.

http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/topic238.html

Here is a link to a list of points re database design, if you want to skip the tutorials.
http://www.databaseanswers.org/approach2db_design.htm