newbie has stupid question

[Bruzer]

Newguy here trying to understand tables and info gathering, attempting to create database for client records and case managment (drug treatment centre) 1 client file; personal info, past legal, employment, family and other case history. sould the tables be broken out or all in one? it seems to be client driven.

[SoftwareMatters]

Information should be broken down in to main areas and put in seperate tables like you have highlighted above i.e. personal info, past legal, employment, family and other case history etc

[Bruzer]

I thought about that but not sure how to create the relationship?

[c_smithwick]

Basically, anything data that you have that is repeated in several records (e.g. City and State for an address entry) should be broken out into a "lookup" table. In the case that I mentioned you might have three tables - a data table with a field for CityID defined as a long integer and a field for StateID defined as long integer, a City lookup table with two fields, CityName defined as text and CityID defined as an Autonumber, and a similar lookup table for State. You will have a one-to-many relationship between the CityID field in the City table and the CityID field in your data table, and a similar setup for your State table. This is known as "normalization". Lookup the concept in a textbook or on the net and you can get some ideas as to how you might need to setup your tables and relationships