Merging Databases

[HaLevi]

I was conversing with a Mr. Boyce but cannot find the question I apologize to
him.
I would like to merge a website Db selling books with our catalog Db. First
of all, I do not know how to merge DBs. Second, in one of the columns, in one
DB, the Id column is in Auto number, while in the other it is not poss. to go
into autonumber since theere is already data. Will this cause problems in
merging. I do want to keep the autonumber if poss.
Thanks

 

[mnature]

Before you can merge the information from these two databases, you need to
decide what your final database should look like. What tables do you need,
and what fields do you need in those tables. You have a lot of data. Look
at it closely, and decide what is important, and what you can discard. You
cannot just append one table to another, without understanding what those two
tables do. Is there duplicate information in the two databases? How are
your tables going to relate to each other? Have you normalized your tables?
How do the tables and fields in one database relate to those in the other
one? These are the questions you have to ask yourself before you can start
to merge anything.

 

[HaLevi]

This is my problem.I realize that I do not know the meaning of
normalization. I do not know how to relate the tables. The information is all
important, as I want to update my website with items in the catalog.
Duplicate entries are few.
I am trying to find out if there is an easy way to do this or if I will be
forced to do data entry by hand. I realize that I may be way out of my
league. I came here to see where I stand.
If you have the patience to help a novice I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[mnature]

Start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. Get some paper and
pencils, and just list what sorts of information you have. Not the actual
data, but what kinds of data. Then, decide what logical groupings you have
with these kinds of data. Decide how you will uniquely identify the
information within these logical groupings. Normalization means that any
time you might have duplicate data, you can put that data into a table, and
then reference it from the other tables. You are dealing with books, so you
might keep track of publishers. There will be a lot of duplicate publishers
for all of your books, so they would go into a table of publishers, which
would have a unique PublisherID to identify each one, and then the
PublisherID would be referenced by the Book Table, to identify which
publisher goes with a particular book.

If you have never done a relational database before, you will have a steep
learning curve on all of this. You might consider buying some books, or at
least doing some Google searches, on how to design an access database. This
forum can help you, but you are the one who has to do the majority of the
work.

 

[HaLevi]

The databases already exist. I am trying to transfer the data from one to the
other so that my website will be updated with the items in my catalog. The
website Db is set and I cannot play with it or I will mess up the website. Is
it really that complicated to move the data from one to the other?

 

[mnature]

Is it really that complicated? Well, it can be, depending on what your two
databases look like. The problem really is, that you are speaking in very
general terms about something that needs to be extremely specific. If one of
the databases cannot ever be changed, then your only option is to make the
other database look as much as possible like the first one. That is, the
tables should look the same, the fields in the tables should be named the
same, the data types of the fields should be the same. Once you have done
that, then you can just import the information from the second database into
the first. If you have tables with different information than the first
database, you will need to find out how to link those tables to the primary
keys of tables in the first database.

It is as if you are saying that you want to remove the door from one of your
cars, and put it on a different car. And you come to this forum and talk
about how all you want to do is move the door, but you don't tell us what
make or model either of the cars is. We cannot help you, except in general
statements, because you are not giving us any specifics of the two databases.
With a car door, specifics would be the size, shape, and type of hinges. In
a database, specifics are things like what the tables are, what are the
fields within the tables, which fields are primary keys, and what are the
data types of the fields.

One thing you might consider doing, if you have ever used Excel very much,
is to place all of the information from both databases into Excel, using
cut-and-paste to match up information as well as you can. Then create a new
database from your website database, with all of the tables, queries and
such, but without the data. Then import the combined data from Excel into
the new database. This way, if there are autonumber fields or such, it will
not matter, since you will have cleaned all that up before the import.

If you have not been doing it, please make sure to do regular backups of
your databases. That way, if you make a mistake that you cannot recover
from, you will have a way to bring everything back.

 

[Jivan Amara]

The databases already exist. I am trying to transfer the data from one to the
other so that my website will be updated with the items in my catalog. The
website Db is set and I cannot play with it or I will mess up the website. Is
it really that complicated to move the data from one to the other?

Short answer: yes.

If it sounds complicated to you, unless you have a db-proficient friend
that owes you a favor, it'd probably be worthwhile for you to hire
someone to do this for you.