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  1. #1
    whitelexi is offline Novice
    Windows Vista Access 2010 32bit
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    Angry Help with Table Planning in Student Database


    I would really appreciate any help I can get with this problem. I am a newbie user of MS Access. I’m working on Windows Vista Business OS, 32 bit PC System, and MS Access 2007.
    I am building a school database for a small university where I work; the aim is to help simplify my workload. This database is intended to store basic student bio-data, student courses and course plan (by semester and by session year), student fees payments per semester, and finally, student results per semester.
    I am still at the tables planning stage (where you would normally create tables and have them linked to each other) but I am stuck and encountering problems with how to create course plans for every single student for every session and for every semester, and then tie these students to results from those courses.
    I’ve tried creating a table called course to house all courses and course codes offered by the school but there are many courses offered and I just can’t figure out how to pick out 10 courses out of nearly 200 every semester for a single student. I also tried creating a course-plan table to be a bridge between students table and course table, but that didn’t help much. I’ve worked day and night trying different table designs but I need help. I am not good with programming languages and now I feel I might need a lot of VB to get this database working.
    I have attached a picture of my current architecture and the zipped database for you to look at and test. No data within it is sensitive; it’s just dummy data really. I would really appreciate any suggestions.Click image for larger version. 

Name:	Architecture.jpg 
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Size:	148.9 KB 
ID:	15669StudentsDB.zip

  2. #2
    recyan's Avatar
    recyan is offline Expert
    Windows 2K Access 2000
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    Guess, if you post more information about all the entities that are involved, someone should be able to get you going ( Hope the TAT is not a critical factor):
    For Eg.
    1) Am developing an application for an University.
    2) It will keep track Students, Courses Offered and Taken, the Results and the Fees Payments ( That's as good as a mini-ERP package ).
    3) The University has many Schools under it.
    4) Each School has a Dean heading it.
    5) The Dean may change from time to time for a School.
    6) Each School has Many Departments.
    7) Each Department has a Head.
    8) The Department Head may change from Time to Time.
    and so on.

    Thanks

  3. #3
    whitelexi is offline Novice
    Windows Vista Access 2010 32bit
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    Quote Originally Posted by recyan View Post
    Guess, if you post more information about all the entities that are involved, someone should be able to get you going ( Hope the TAT is not a critical factor):
    For Eg.
    1) Am developing an application for an University.
    2) It will keep track Students, Courses Offered and Taken, the Results and the Fees Payments ( That's as good as a mini-ERP package ).
    3) The University has many Schools under it.
    4) Each School has a Dean heading it.
    5) The Dean may change from time to time for a School.
    6) Each School has Many Departments.
    7) Each Department has a Head.
    8) The Department Head may change from Time to Time.
    and so on.

    Thanks

    Okay, thanks for that... I've tried to find out all the entities i need, here it goes:


    1. I’m developing an application for a university
    2. It will keep track of students bio-data, Courses offered and taken, results and the fees payment.
    3. The university has many schools.
    4. Each school has a Dean heading it
    5. The dean may change from time to time
    6. Each school has many departments
    7. Each department has a Department Head
    8. The department head may change from time to time
    9. Many students can be in one department
    10. Many students can offer one course
    11. A session is a school year
    12. A student can make many payments
    13. A student pays school fees for every session
    14. If a student is residing in the hostel, they pay accommodation fees every session
    15. A session is made up of 2 Semesters
    16. A student takes a different set of courses in each semester
    17. At the end of each semester, a student writes an exam for each course taken.
    18. A student takes many courses in a semester
    19. There can only be up to 3 administrators of the database

    20. An administrator can change Deans, Heads of departments, enter results of exams, modify student data, edit or add course codes and descriptions, view and print out payment invoices/status, and generally oversee what happens with the database.

  4. #4
    whitelexi is offline Novice
    Windows Vista Access 2010 32bit
    Join Date
    Sep 2012
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    20
    I was honestly hoping there'll be a way of linking the tables with minimum coding and still have it work okay. I wasn't sure whether I'd need a sessions and semester table created so I just left those out. I also didn't know whether a reciepts table was necessary for storing invoices or whether to just create a report that pulls the necessary fields from other tables.

    Then theres the preoblem of how to get the administrator table to take up an administrator status in the entire system... honestly, i dot know how to go about that one.

    the whole thing is just so confusing and its making my job a nightmare with loads to do in my workload. I also noticed that when a table has too many links to it, it can affect the way it functions, perhaps its just me getting it all wrong. I am pleading for guidance or help.

    thanks

  5. #5
    orange's Avatar
    orange is offline Moderator
    Windows XP Access 2003
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    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada; West Palm Beach FL
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    16,716
    Work through this tutorial and make sure you understand the steps involved.

    Getting your tables and relationships set up AND TESTED (WITH SOME TEST DATA SCENARIOS) is critical to the success of your database. Do not jump into the nitty gritty of Access before you have confirmed your database design.

    If you learn by watching then watch these to get an appreciation of the concepts involved.
    Good luck with your project.

    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

  6. #6
    whitelexi is offline Novice
    Windows Vista Access 2010 32bit
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    Thanks a bunch for this... I'll go through all the steps... thanks.

Please reply to this thread with any new information or opinions.

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