Hi Ed,
The number of records will normally not effect how the records are accessed provided the data is normalized and appropriate indexes are created to access the records efficiently.
With an index, access to each record would be about the same whether the record is the first record or the last record as it would have to read 'n' index pages to locate the record and then a single access to retrieve it. So if the depth of the index where 2 it would take at most 2 index reads and 1 record read to get any record in the database.
As for the layout of the database, normalization will decide that for you. In your case, I would create two tables:
Table one would hold the member Information and the primary index key would be member id, e.g.,
MemberID -- primary key
Salutation
FirstName
LastName
Address1
Address2
City
State
Zip
Title
Phone
Fax
Table two would be a table of members available dates with the primary index key being the member id and a secondary one on available date
AvailDate - secondary key
MemberID - primary key
Why two tables? First and foremost it normalizes the data and second it will provide for a cross tab query of the data, that is, if I need to know which members are available on a specific date I can query Table two for the date then reference the member information for the details of the member.
A note on normalization -- normalization is the process of taking data fields and grouping them based on like dependencies. There are three levels of normalization with 3rd normal form being the goal. Once you have the data in third normal form you can then create the database tables and decide if you need additional indices for efficient access to the data based upon the application.
HTH,
--
Mike -- FrontPage MVP '97-'02
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I'm creating an Access database for a website and I'm in process of making a table. I'm creating an availability schedule where members (around 80) would state if they are available on pre-determined nights.(2 months worth of dates) My table could either consist of 80 records (one for each member) and each record would have 60 fields (one field for each date); or could write to database for each date person's available on separate record therefore table would have two fields, one name and one date field, but would have approx 60 records for each person (80 people) for a total of around 4800 records.
I'm wondering if one method is alot more efficient than the other?
