M
michelleumich
I am developing a Scholarship database and how my tables are set up
now- it works, but I feel like there is a better way to do it. The
reason I am stuck is because my data has a many-many relationship and
I am a little lost as to how to go about linking my tables becuase of
this. Basically I have two tables- One for each student- their
demographic data and the scholarship they have received (and some
information about the scholarship)- and then another table contains
all of the information about the scholarship- where it comes from,
account data, etc. The scholarship information data in the first table
is all available in the second. I am basically converting years of
unorganized excel spreadsheet data into a database- and with that came
a lot of inconsistencies that I spent a lot of time ironing out. Now
that those are taken care of, I realize that I don't need to repeat
the data- it's bad news for when the scholarship information needs to
be updated. Anyways, this data is a many-many because each student
can have more than one scholarship, and each scholarship can go to
more than one student. The way I have my tables set up now makes it
hard to search through forms consistently-
This is how the tables are set up as of now: [indicates field]
(Instead of using the technical terms in the table, I just explained
the fields if necessary)
Student/Scholarship Table-
[Name]
[A]
[Bunch]
[of
[Demographic]
[Data]
[Scholarship Name]
[Second Scholarship- this column is left blank if the student does not
have one]
[Unique Identification # of the Scholarship they have]
[The Unique Identification # of the second scholarship they have, if
they have a second scholarship]
[Another descriptive # of the Scholarship the student has]
[Another column for the same descriptive #, if the student has a
second scholarship]
Scholarship Information Table-
[Scholarship Name] (Same data as first table)
[Unique Identification #] (same data as first table)
[Another Descriptive # ] (Same data as first table)
I know that there must be a better way to organize this data without a
ton of null values and multiple columns for the same data in the
student/scholarship table. However, I don't know how to go about
linking a many-many relationship. I realize that I probably am going
to have to separate my tables- this is fine as long as there's a way
to include data from multiple fields on forms. Anyways, I hope
somebody can help me.
Thanks,
M
now- it works, but I feel like there is a better way to do it. The
reason I am stuck is because my data has a many-many relationship and
I am a little lost as to how to go about linking my tables becuase of
this. Basically I have two tables- One for each student- their
demographic data and the scholarship they have received (and some
information about the scholarship)- and then another table contains
all of the information about the scholarship- where it comes from,
account data, etc. The scholarship information data in the first table
is all available in the second. I am basically converting years of
unorganized excel spreadsheet data into a database- and with that came
a lot of inconsistencies that I spent a lot of time ironing out. Now
that those are taken care of, I realize that I don't need to repeat
the data- it's bad news for when the scholarship information needs to
be updated. Anyways, this data is a many-many because each student
can have more than one scholarship, and each scholarship can go to
more than one student. The way I have my tables set up now makes it
hard to search through forms consistently-
This is how the tables are set up as of now: [indicates field]
(Instead of using the technical terms in the table, I just explained
the fields if necessary)
Student/Scholarship Table-
[Name]
[A]
[Bunch]
[of
[Demographic]
[Data]
[Scholarship Name]
[Second Scholarship- this column is left blank if the student does not
have one]
[Unique Identification # of the Scholarship they have]
[The Unique Identification # of the second scholarship they have, if
they have a second scholarship]
[Another descriptive # of the Scholarship the student has]
[Another column for the same descriptive #, if the student has a
second scholarship]
Scholarship Information Table-
[Scholarship Name] (Same data as first table)
[Unique Identification #] (same data as first table)
[Another Descriptive # ] (Same data as first table)
I know that there must be a better way to organize this data without a
ton of null values and multiple columns for the same data in the
student/scholarship table. However, I don't know how to go about
linking a many-many relationship. I realize that I probably am going
to have to separate my tables- this is fine as long as there's a way
to include data from multiple fields on forms. Anyways, I hope
somebody can help me.
Thanks,
M