Hi all, this is my first post here so please be kind I'll do my best to explain my situation as clearly as possible. I have a framework I'm currently operating from, but I'm seeking input/feedback and external ideas so I can improve what I'm doing. I'm not asking anyone to just design a database for me like I see so many beginners asking. I just need advice from people who know what they are talking about!
My Access "background": I'm self-taught and still getting my head around Access and relational databases in general. I've built a few small databases to practice and learn so I can get my office away from using massive Excel spreadsheets with dozens of tabs to manage records.
So here's the story. I work in a student support office for a small university. Our office has three "worlds" within it: general support, a language program, and recruiting and scholarships. Each "world" has its own functions and goals. There is some overlap between worlds, but they are also very distinct in operation. Here's a simplified breakdown:
- We have 100 students that our office supports. We retain an individual record on each student (Name, birthdate, address, etc).
- Twenty of the 100 are enrolled in our language program. Eighty are not enrolled. This number changes each semester as old students matriculate and new students come in.
- We oversee everything within our language program (course information, registration, teachers, tutors, payroll, students, etc).
- Forty of the 100 come to the university through our office's recruiting/scholarship model. Most of those students are also in our language program, but not all of them.
- We track all the info for our scholarship program (interviews, language level, admission information, etc.).
Because I oversee all three worlds, I see the ways they connect and love the idea of one unified database to track all of our information. However, because I am just starting out, I am hesitant to tackle a project of that magnitude...I feel like that takes skills beyond what I have at the moment! So, I have been operating with three separate databases with the hope that they could be combined or reconstructed into a new DB someday.
So my question is, what is the better approach? Where it gets challenging is that yes, there's certain information I don't want to manually duplicate across three databases (e.g. name, birthdate, etc.) and risk errors that way, but on the other hand not all students will need to be linked into all the other information (e.g. the 80 students who will not be registering for courses in the language program or who don't need to be tracked under our recruiting model). Any advice or ideas would be very welcome! Thank you!!