Database Design for Fill-In Forms

[Jani]

I would appreciate some confirmation that I'm doing this the right way or
advice on what would be better process. Just not sure I'm on the right track.

The data to be collected is many types of observations made for various
activities and these observations are rated either safe or at risk. I have a
form that lists all the different activities and the associate enters the
number of safe or at risk
observations for a particular activity. That data is all loaded into one
table with 2 fields for each activity - one safe one at risk (this table has,
of course, many columns). For graphing and reporting purposes, I need to
total all the safe observations and all the at risk observations, which are
in different fields. I have created queries which appends the data table from
each activity into one table, separating it by safe or at risk. From there do
the reports. Is this the best way to handle this type of data or what would
be the better (or more correct way)? Thanks! Jani

 

[Jani]

Little more information - when I do the queries to combine the activities and
observations, the query appends the activity data to a 'category' field, and
the various fields for the number of observations for each activity are
appended to 'NumOfObsSafe' and 'NumOfObsAtRisk' which allows me to graph on
each type of activity. jms

 

[Roger Carlson]

Putting all your information into a single table is generally considered bad
design, however based on the information you've given, it's difficult to say
for sure. You need, in my opinion, to do some research on data
normalization, which is a method of grouping data into the correct tables.
On the following link, you can find a number of references and tutorial to
help.

http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=238


--
--Roger Carlson
MS Access MVP
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[Jani]

Thanks for the super quick reply. I will to research as you suggest!