Units of Measurement

[Lou]

Good Day again;

I have a recipe database that I would like to incroporate
a unit of measurement conversion so the user doesn't have
to break down an item cost.

I have an ingredients table which list
[Ingredient Name]
[Unit of Measure]
[Cost]

Then in my recipes sub query you choose the item it brings
in the cost and unit of measure, you place the quantity in
and it calculates the cost.

What I would like to do is a sliding scale, so if the item
is costed out by the pound (in the ingredients section)
and you select it in your subquery but only want 3 ounces
it will calculate the proper cost of the 3 ounces. Any
Ideas and suggestions would be great and I fI am missing
any info for you please let me know.

Thank you.
Lou

 

[Allen Browne]

Different ingredients have radically different kinds of units (e.g. by
weight (butter), by volume (liquid, flour)). The basic structure would be
something like this:

UnitType table
UnitTypeID Text Unique. Name of unit.

Ingredient table:
IngredientID Text Unique. Name of ingredient
UnitTypeID Text One of the names in the UnitType table.
UnitCost Currency Current cost of one unit of this
ingredient.

Recipe table:
Quantity Number Now many units
IngredientID Text One of the ingredients

After that, if you want to convert pounds to ounces etc, you need another
table holding the conversion factors, and some way to indicate the actual
measurement to use and when conversion is needed.