Please help!!

[Desperate]

I'm attempting to index a newspaper and have never done anything besides a
basic database. I'm wanting to have the following fields: date, issue
number, volume number, article title, personal names, and keywords. Here's
where I'm confused. My date, issue, and volume can go in one table, but i
ultimately want to be able to search by article title or name or keyword and
have it tell me which issue/volume/date it's in. Any help is greatly
appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[Ken Snell [MVP]]

You'll need to put the article data in its own table, in which you have a
field that is a foreign key back to the table that has the date/issue/volume
data.

 

[getting better]

thanks so much! so i will need to do the same thing for keyword and personal
name as well. could you explain a little about foreign key? i have a field
labeled "article title" should it be labeled primary key? sorry, still
frazzled.

 

[John Vinson]

On Sun, 22 May 2005 14:57:01 -0700, "getting better" <getting

thanks so much! so i will need to do the same thing for keyword and personal
name as well. could you explain a little about foreign key? i have a field
labeled "article title" should it be labeled primary key? sorry, still
frazzled.

PMFJI but... an article title is NOT a good choice of primary key.
Titles are free text; as such they are neither unique nor compact, two
of the three (along with stable) requirements of a primary key. There
might be many, many articles all titled "Police investigate breakin"
over the years!

You should probably have an "artificial key" such as an Autonumber.
For the issue number, you may want to do the same, or if you are
*quite* sure that every issue has its own unique, unchanging issue
number, you could use it; or, if you have Volume 1994, Issues 1 - 52
you could use a two-field Primary Key by clicking the Volume field and
the Issue field and clicking the key icon in table design view. You
could then use Volume and Issue fields in the Articles table as a
foreign key.


John W. Vinson[MVP]

 

[getting better]

sorry, but this is a little over my head guys. guess i just need to buy the
book or take a crash course. thanks for the info!