Windows XP, Access 2003
My training vehicle for learning Access is a utility to track golf scores and maybe create a golfing reservation system.


The first table is tbl_Golf_Clubs: a place where courses are located. One club may have multiple courses.
Next is tbl_Golf_Courses: Each set of 9 or 18 holes is several courses. If there are four tees, each set of tees has different distances, different rating and slopes, and therefore I call each set of tees a different course. A club with 18 holes may have five courses, each named for the tees. A standard set is, from longest to shortest, Black, Gold, Blue, White, and Red.
tbl_hole_data: contains the information about each hole, one record per hole, and linked back to the course table.

All well and good, until I spent some time thinking about simulators. I own a simulator where you hit the ball indoors while the computer monitors the ball as you launch it (hit it) and display the course details and ball trajectory on the screen. It is quite accurate. And yes, you use your regular clubs and real golf balls.

The problem is that my simulator, call it My_Sim, has more than thirty courses to include the likes of Pebble Beach, Spyglass Hill, St Andrews, and other courses. Other people with simulators, say Joes_Sim, usually have these same courses. There are quite a few simulators in operation now and I don’t want to have ten or more instances of Pebble Beach in my database.

Further, there are several simulator manufacturers and each one’s Pebble Beach will probably play a bit different. I would like to be able to differentiate between each simulator manufacturer, and all of them should be distinct from the real course.

I have some thoughts, but rather than embarrass myself with feeble scenarios, I wish to solicit a few opinions.

Thank you for your time