Data Correlation

[Les]

Hi can anyone help me,



I have just graduated and have started working for a building developer
which deals with a large quantity of drawings. As you can imagine these all
need documenting and revision of drawings kept a track of. I have recently
taking over the administration of the drawings and their current system is
not capable of easily managing the data so I have taken it upon myself to
try and organise the data in a database. The problem arises when displaying
the drawing numbers with the revision dates and revision letters like below
in a grid fashion.



Day 1 17 9 20 11

Month 3 6 8 1 5

Year 02 02 03 04 04

Drawing Num

Drw1 - A B

Drw2 - A B C

Drw3 - A B

Drw4 -



I have studied database systems during my degree (IT related) but either I
have forgotten or not come across how to do this.



If anyone can help my by either pointing in a direction of where to look or
similar databases that use a similar grid technique I would be very
grateful, I'm not stupid and am prepared to put the work in to get the right
result.



One last thing, as this is being used in an office I only have access to
limited facilities and software that is on offer so the only database
available is MS Access XP, very annoying having studied and worked with
Oracle.



Thanks in advance



Les

 

[Larry Linson]

Displaying / reporting in a grid is usually accomplished with a Cross-Tab
Query, or a Pivot Table (Access Pivot Tables are more limited in some
respects and are only available in Access 2002 or later).

However, if I "extend" what I understand your grid to look like (it isn't
easy to reproduce reports in text posts such as this) to a large number of
documents and a large number of changes, it might be cumbersome to use. In
my brief experience, many years ago, in a tool design shop, there were lots
of drawings that had a very deep stack of change orders... more, maybe, than
would fit in the maximum 22" width of an Access report.

Perhaps your drawings are redrawn, incorporating changes, more frequently
that those were.

If your user interface could be on-screen, or with a limited number of
drawings on the Report, you might show the Drawing Identification and other
information as the main Form (or Report), and the changes with date for that
drawing in a subForm control.

Larry Linson
Microsoft Access MVP

 

[Les]

Please see replies to points below,

Thanks

Les

Displaying / reporting in a grid is usually accomplished with a Cross-Tab
Query, or a Pivot Table (Access Pivot Tables are more limited in some
respects and are only available in Access 2002 or later).

Les: is there any good sources of information out there that I can look at,
examples as access's help does have it's limitations.

However, if I "extend" what I understand your grid to look like (it isn't
easy to reproduce reports in text posts such as this) to a large number of
documents and a large number of changes, it might be cumbersome to use. In
my brief experience, many years ago, in a tool design shop, there were
lots
of drawings that had a very deep stack of change orders... more, maybe,
than
would fit in the maximum 22" width of an Access report.

Les: I see your point and had addressed this in my mind and was planning to
start a new page when the number of issues reached x amount (when it didn't
fit on that page) but this is something that would concern me when I
actually got what I wanted working... working.

Perhaps your drawings are redrawn, incorporating changes, more frequently
that those were.

If your user interface could be on-screen, or with a limited number of
drawings on the Report, you might show the Drawing Identification and
other
information as the main Form (or Report), and the changes with date for
that
drawing in a subForm control.

Les: Yes this would probably be done on the screen version of the report
(form)