Fire Department Equipment Inventory - Normalizing Tables

**mduplantis** · 11-03-2015, 07:58 AM

Hi,

I am creating a home grown, small access database in order to track our department's equipment (trucks, jaws of life), tools (snow blowers, hand saws) and Personal Protective Equipment (fire bunker gear). I have an idea of what I want to do and I can do it, but not correctly. I'm trying to set up the tables and relationships correctly, the first time around.

I'll have 5 main forms (PERS, PPE, Stations, Rigs, Equipment). When I click on the main tab, I'll have a set of form under each one (Main form name, Service Ticket, Comments).

Click image for larger version.

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In planning my database, I created 5 tables (one for each form...which I'll need to work on normalizing). What I really think needs to be done, is to create just one Service Ticket Table and then have a choice on the type of equipment and choose the Equipment's ID number.

I've attached an excel document to show my first attempt at organizing my thoughts. I realize it is not normalized or correct, but I had to start somewhere. I haven't created very many database from scratch (obviously), but I am interested in doing it correctly.

Any thoughts or suggestions, to push me in the correct direction is greatly appreciated. I have a good understanding of databases from the reporting side, but not much from the design side.

Thank you
TSD Database.zip

**orange** · 11-03-2015, 08:19 AM

Here are some tutorials on database design from RogersAccess library. I recommend that you work through a few of these to understand the concepts of design. You have to work through the tutorial, but each has a solution and what you learn can be used with any database. It will take about ~30-45 minutes for each.
Entity Relationship Diagramming

Class info database
Consolidated Widgets

You will also find this of interest Normalization.

Other links:
http://www.utteraccess.com/forum/ind...wtopic=1998783

Good luck.