Creating a survey that needs to store comments

[ipguardian]

I have designed a survey using asp and MS Access

In this survey, currently, I am storing all the results in two tables.
SurveyResult - (9 fields) for storing normal results
SurveyBlobResult - (also 9 fields) for storing additional comments

Should I merge these results to just one table - what would be the
penalties or advantages? Is there a generic design that I should follow
when storing survey results.

BTW. Here is my survey
http://www.soft-trek.com.au/ipgSurvey1.asp

I appreciate all comments and criticisms.

Thank you
ipg

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Are you saying that the 9 fields in SurveyResult each hold the answer to a
different question in a single row? That's not a great design: each answer
should be a separate row in a "child" table.

For a good example of how to build a survey application, see Duane Hookom's
"At Your Survey"
http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/Otherdownload.asp?SampleName='At Your Survey 2000'

 

[ipguardian]

Hi Douglas,

Are you saying that the 9 fields in SurveyResult each hold the answer to a
different question in a single row? That's not a great design: each answer
should be a separate row in a "child" table.

I am doing very similar to what you have said. I only keep the key
results in 3 fields. The rests are used for statistical purposes; e.g.
of those who responded to yes to question1, how many are female or what
age group, etc, etc.

For a good example of how to build a survey application, see Duane Hookom's
"At Your Survey"
http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/Otherdownload.asp?SampleName='At Your Survey 2000'

Thanks for the link. I will bookmark this.

Back to my original question, should I merge or not?

Many thanks

Cheers
ipg