how to best structure this?

[ivory_kitten]

i am upgrading a cost calculator from excel to access so need some advice on
the best way to structure this please!?

i'm starting with one spreadsheet called Linehaul Costs, which details the
breakdown of the costs and the total calculated cost to get to each
destination.

i will describe how my excel table is set up first: at the top of the table
i have a user entered field for "handling at uplift" and "average container
weight"

then i have a list of linehaul suppliers with 2 columns, "fuel surcharge"
and "base container weight"

then i have a table with destinations which has 4 columns
Column 1 is "base cost" (some are user entered and some are calculations as
some destinations is the same cost as 1 route plus a second leg to get to the
final destination
Column 2 is "additional weight" the amount charged per extra tonne.
Column 3 is the subtotal of the base cost + (the additional weight * the
difference between the between the average container weight and the suppliers
base weight)
Column 4 is the total cost which is calculated as the subtotal + suppliers
fuel surcharge + handling at uplift

So far in Access I have created a table listing my Destinations and another
table listing my Linehaul suppliers, I'm unsure of the best way to merge the
rest of the data in to access, some destinations have more than one supplier
and in the final cost calculation the user has to choose which suppliers they
are using in their quote.

i hope this makes sense and someone can point me in the right direction!

 

[Keith Wilby]

i am upgrading a cost calculator from excel to access so need some advice
on
the best way to structure this please!?

You can't "upgrade" from Excel to Access, they are two completely different
animals. As you know, Excel is a spreadsheet application. Access is a
toolkit which enables a user to *develop* an application, it doesn't really
do anything for you straight out of the box.

Is there something you want to do but can't using Excel? If you do go down
the Access route, are you comfortable with the concept of data
normalisation?

Keith.
www.keithwilby.co.uk

 

[Fred]

Hello Ivory Kitten,

Structure starts with a clear understanding of the entities that you want to
database, the relationships between them and a clear understanding of what
you want your database to accomplish.

Your post kind of hopped around and misxed terminology on your current
system ("Lists", "Spreadsheet" "Table" and so really didn't even clearly
describe your old system. Nor did you describe the real world
process/situation that you are trying to database, although, since you know
your business better than us, you probably mistakenly think that you have
done so my mentionioning all of those terminologies of your busines.


It appears clear that you have the following entities and have a mission to
database them:

- Linehaul suppliers
- Destinations

And so those probably should be tables. Include an autonumber Primary Key
in each of them.

After that it's unclear. A couple questions that might help you define it:

Besides storing lists of carriers and destinations, what do want this
database to accomplish?

Are there entities in that first list that you describe, and, if so, what
are they? Or is it just 2 blanks which a user fills in to trigger a
calculation, after which the data is not stored?

Hopes that helps a little

 

[Gina Whipp]

ivory_kitten,

Let's start here...

Jeff Conrad's resources page:
http://www.accessmvp.com/JConrad/accessjunkie/resources.html

The Access Web resources page:
http://www.mvps.org/access/resources/index.html

A free tutorial written by Crystal (MS Access MVP):
http://allenbrowne.com/casu-22.html

MVP Allen Browne's tutorials:
http://allenbrowne.com/links.html#Tutorials


http://www.databasedev.co.uk/table-of-contents.html

--
Gina Whipp

"I feel I have been denied critical, need to know, information!" - Tremors
II

http://www.regina-whipp.com/index_files/TipList.htm