Family table design!!!

[Greg]

HI All,
I am about to redesign a school database, the original is a mess with
all data for children and parents being in one table. I am trying to
come up with an efficient way of modeling a family allowing for the
possibility of seperated or divorced parents

Does anyone have some clues??? i have a few ideas mainly to create a
child table, a parent table, and a family table with the family table
holding contact information or maybe optional second address fields
for the seperated parent if required.

some clues, sample or web sights dealing with this issue would be
greatly appreciated.

Greg

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Greg

Actually, depending on the data, having one table for persons, regardless of
their role(s), is a GOOD idea.

A "family" is whatever collection of persons is considered a family in your
jurisdiction. You could handle this by having a tblFamily, with an ID, and
a trelFamilyMember table, that associates one/more persons (via PersonID)
with a given FamilyID. You could even add a "relationship" field that you'd
use to designate one "family member" as a biological parent, another as
"adopted child", and so on.

Good luck

Jeff Boyce
<Access MVP>