Beginner - 3 tables in 3 loops

[dsasorin]

Hi !

I am a beginner to databeses, and particulary to MS Access 2003. (althought I passed the first lessons)
I want to make a small database with possibility to grow up. (max. 100 entries for a table)
I think that in my case the data must be structured like loop into loop.
Like that:

Year:
2000
2001
2002
2003
etc.

Plant:


plant_1
plant_2
plant_3
etc.

Generator:
gen_1
gen_2
gen_3
etc.

So for every Year it must exist some Power Plants, and for every Power Plant it must exist some Generators.
I already have made 3 tables: YEAR, PLANT, GENERATOR with data in it.
So, few questions arise:

1. Is my algorithm any good (to consider 3 loops one in another for database) ?
2. If my algorithm is good, how should it be done the relationship between tables ?

That is for start. Later i must make queries, input data, some logical comparison, etc.
So i must do right from the beginning. I admit that my database must be done for 8 loops, not 3, but if i understand for 3, the same it will be for 8.

Thanks in advance for help !

[pbaldy]

You are correct in wanting to get the table design correct to start out with. The tables you've described so far are what I would consider "lookup" tables, not transaction tables. In other words, one would have your list of available plants, the other available generators (I'm not sure I would have a table for years, but I guess that's dependent on the overall goal).

I'm not sure what you mean by "loops". It would help to know what purpose the database is meant to serve. I might guess that you would add a transactional table, which might contain fields for the year, plant, generator, and perhaps some sort of activity level (kilowatts generated or some such thing).

[dsasorin]

The goal is to make a growing database (a programm) with inputs like year2010/powerplant 3/generator1/ .... or year 2012/powerplant7/generator3 and so on ...

Then, the programm must have a simple user interface with those inputs. In the database tables i must asign diferent numbers (points) on specific tasks of the generator for example, and after a logical comparison and arithmetic calculations, it must result a number of points. So i need to input/select new data, to see/select old data, and after that i need a result (number of points) which coresponds to a certain ANSWER, introduced in the very beginning of the database (i.e. THE GENERATOR IS GOOD), also a table, i think.

So, the purpose of the database is to find the state of the generator, based on the actions or the maintenance work made on each generator from database, and a new one.
The criteria is based on those points and arithmetic calculations.

Yeap, you gave me a tip with lookup tables. Right now i pass to the next step for learning Access: lookup tables !

Thank you.