Table with 'free fields' to be named later?

[Michael]

Hi,

Before i try to do something i wanted youre opinion on the following:

We have a database containing project + attendance data for instance, we
organise meetings on specific subjects.

The table with project data (meetings) contains stuff like hours to spent,
rates, who responsible etc. These are fields necesarry for each project
(i.e. are the same).

Now here comes our problem, every meeting has differences like do persons
attend workshop 1 or 2 etc., do they have lunch and so on. In other words,
characteristics specific for certain meetings.
Because of that we now export the persons to excel, add extra columns and
fill in the rest.

It would be preferable to have all the data in Access i.m.o. but.. to build
a specific table for each project is not an option.
Could we add extra fields (as a reference table) and name the fields, assign
the type of field (char, num, boolean etc.) and if its used yes or no later.

The table would be something like:
ID: project number (with a relation to the project table)
Free field 1: text field
Type for free field 1: text field where you enter "numeric", Boolean",
"date" etc.
Is free field 1 active: boolean
Free field 2: text field
Type for free field 2: text field where you enter "numeric", Boolean",
"date" etc.
Is free field 2 active: boolean
etc....

Well.. after saying this my question is if i am thinking in the right
direction and if its possible. Hopefully you might have some suggestion ot
examples?

Txs in advance,
Michael

 

[Brendan Reynolds]

Some of the databases I 'inherited' from a previous employee of the company
I work for include 'spare' fields like this. They're a maintenance
nightmare, as no one now knows who's using which 'spare' field, for what
purpose. And looking at the record source of a report, and finding that it
returns all records where 'Flag2 = 1', is not very informative! :-(

Then there's the question of how many fields do you add? What ever number
you choose, in the majority of cases most fields will be unused, wasting
space and complicating your queries, and inevitably, sooner or later,
someone will need an extra field in the table.

Rebecca Riordan's article and example on 'Sub-Classing Entities' at the
following URL may be of interest ...

http://www.mvps.org/access/tables/tbl0013.htm