Table design question - advice needed

[David]

I have a design problem that has me stuck
I'm modifying a system
It currently supports internal clients who are retrieved from a userdirectory table. This table cannot be changed and is imported bi-weekly
Now they want me to cater for external clients, they will not be in thois table and can never be
So I created a new table for external clients
There will only be one client per record either internal or external
What do I put in my main table? Its looking like 2 columns external client and internal client only one of which will be populated
Or I could have an intermediate table for all clients but this would be a maintenence nightmare since it would have to be updated every time we import the userdirectory
The main table has to have dozens of joins with other tables, would this not be complex for clients if I have 2 columns

Anyone have any good ideas

 

[Chris Eberhart]

This looks like a good candidate for a union query which
you could then use as the datasource for all other
operations.

 

[David]

Yes but my problem now is I have ended up with 2 columns in my main table (one for internal clients and one for external clients) and I dont lknow if I can now do the joins I need. Its a nightmare.

 

[Peter De Baets]

One possible solution is to keep all your clients on one table and
have a field named "Type" that is set to "I", or "Internal" for
internal clients, "E" or "External" for external clients. This could
be a new table, so your imported table would never have to change.
You'd just have to write a routine or an update query to keep your
internal clients on the new table current, based on the latest
imported data.

A client is a client, right? It would seem to make sense to have them
all on one table.

Hope this helps,

Peter De Baets
Peter's Software - MS Access Tools for Developers
http://www.peterssoftware.com