Multiple dependent combo boxes

[vroedie]

Hi,

I'm currently building an Inventory DB for entering HW and users. In
the DB I have created a form to define hardware. For this form I've
created several tables where I've defined Type, Brand, Line, Model, CPU
and RAM. On the form I've made combo boxen and linked them to these
tables. Now I would like to make the choices of these boxes dependent
of each other. I think I'll manage to create a requery statement, but
I'm a bit confused on how I should build the tables.

What they look like now:

Tbl_Type:

ID
Type

Tbl_Brand
ID
Brand

Tbl_Line
ID
Line

Tbl_Model
ID
Model

Tbl_CPU
ID
CPU

Tbl_Ram
ID
Ram

What I would like to do is:

When I select a value from Type

Laptop

I want to display hardware brands of laptops

Dell
IBM

When I select a brand

Dell

I want to display only the laptop lines of this brand

Latitude
Inspiron

Then I want to display the different models of this line

D600
D610

Then follows the CPU speed and amount of RAM in the same manner.

I hope someone can enlighten me.

Regards,

Jeroen

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

See whether http://office.microsoft.com/en-ca/assistance/HA011730581033.aspx
is enough to get you going.

 

[vroedie]

Hi,

This helps some, but I still cannot figure out how to make a
many-to-many link.

I thought about doing it like this:

tbl_Type:

ID
Type

tbl_Brand:

ID
Brand
Type

tbl_Line
ID
Line
Brand
Type

tbl_Model
ID
Model
Line

but how can I put multiple entries for (for example) brands?

Should it be like this:

ID Brand Type
1 Dell Laptop
2 Dell Computer
3 Dell Printer
4 Dell Monitor

and then put the SQL query to DISTINCT so it only shows Dell once?

regards,

Jeroen

Douglas J. Steele schreef:

 

[Douglas J. Steele]

Strikes me that tbl_Brand should only contain ID and Brand, so that Dell and
IBM each only appear once in that table.

You'd then have a tbl_BrandType that contains what your current tbl_Brand
contains.

tbl_Line would then have:

ID Brand Type Line
1 Dell Laptop Inspiron
2 Dell Laptop Latitude
3 Dell Computer Optiplex
4 Dell Computer Precision

and tbl_Model would have

ID Brand Type Line
Model
1 Dell Laptop Inspiron
1300
2 Dell Laptop Inspiron
6400
3 Dell Laptop Latitude
D610
4 Dell Laptop Latitude
D620

Of course, you wouldn't actually have Brand nor Type as text fields in
tbl_Line: you'd store the Id from tbl_Brand and tbl_Type:

ID Brand Type Line
1 1 1
Inspiron
2 1 1
Latitude
3 1 2
Optiplex
4 1 2
Precision

Similarly, Brand, Type and Line wouldn't be text fields in tbl_Model. In
fact, you don't even need to store Brand and Type in that table, since you
can derive those from the tbl_Line ID:

ID Line Model
1 1 1300
2 1 6400
3 2 D610
4 2 D620