One Large Table or four smaller ones?

[Wayne Minor]

I am wrestling with this question. I am building a database with customer
info. The customer lists come from 4 sources:
1.Customers that have done business in the past
2.Customers that have NOT purchased but visited the business (walk ins)
3. Leads from the parent company(prospects)
4. Leads from the phone

Each table has many fields, name address, source, etc. I will need to create
a form with subforms and compare all of the leads so that if i pull up a
customer, the subforms will display reat customer contacts based on address
and phone number. (example: a customer bought from us 2 years ago, but they
call in today-i need to know if they have purchased from us before - or I
get a list from the parent company that thinks they are a prospect but are a
previous customer) I have experimented with one large table and tying in the
four tables with queries, but performance was really slow. If I use four
tables, I will have some duplicate data sucha as name, phone number,
address. The total amount of records is about 20,000 and growing Once the
decision is made i will normalize the data, but i need guidance before i
spend the time getting in deeper. What would you do? Thanks in advance

 

[Kelvin]

Personally I would go with one large table and add four fields for each of
these criteria. Your queries can then just look at these fields to
determine how the client is related.

Kelvin

 

[Wayne Minor]

Thanks. its time to get to work

Personally I would go with one large table and add four fields for each of
these criteria. Your queries can then just look at these fields to
determine how the client is related.

Kelvin

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