BMS Sudden Left Turn!

rowan57

For those of you about to say "Wait a minute, its almost 100% guaranteed that every species will have a cultivar" this isnt true because of the individual nature of peoples collections.

Cheers
Rowan

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In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic....

Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the people of our various nationalities

I often talk to myself because i am the only one who truly understands me.

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BrianP03103

And, as you know Rowan, it only takes one example of inaccuracy to invalidate the design of a database. Therefore, I have to allow for the Cultivar to be optional not required. OTOH, every Cultivar must have a valid Specie, and every Specie must have a valid Genus.

Also, Specimen could relate to either a Cultivar or a Specie, depending on whether or not a relevant cultivar exists for that particular specimen.

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rowan57

Brian, the relationship diagram looks pretty good, i will look in more detail tomorrow night, i start work at 8:am tomorrow so must get some sleep
Just a quick note, this may have already have been taken care of but i can see it on the diagram, in tbl_Specimens, CultivarID must not be required it must be optional unless there is going to be a blank option such as 00 or 01 to enter for No Cultivar.

Again, i will look into it in more detail tomorrow evening.
Cheers
Rowan

__________________
In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic....

Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the people of our various nationalities

I often talk to myself because i am the only one who truly understands me.

BrianP03103

Thank you for the compliment, but more the the willingness to review the work.

The relationship between tblSpecimens and tblCultivars is not required, unless a relevant tblCultivars record exists. Similarly, the relationship between tblSpecies and tblCultivars is not required, unless a relevant tblCultivars record exists.

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rowan57

Thats great

Cheers
Rowan

(Again, gotta go to work but will review the diagram in more detail later on today.)

__________________
In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic....

Words and actions should help to unite, and not divide, the people of our various nationalities

I often talk to myself because i am the only one who truly understands me.

Ravenna

Hi Brian

just had a brief look at your access overview and wondered whether you really need a seperate table for variety. why don't you make one table with all the details regarding the "names" and a seperate regarding all the other things you have in the two tables of species and cultivar like "Description", "Position/Lighting" etc. because right now you have those twice and the tables are redundant. You would still be able to differentiate entries where you just put in the genus and species from those where you want to enter all three because in the former case the field for cultivar will just be empty.

Just an idea.

BrianP03103

Just enter the distinguishing things in the Cultivars table. The data from the Species table will also be viewable in the form, as previously described. The fields may be redundant, but the data is not. I expect many (if not most) of the fields in a Cultivars table record to be empty, in deference to the applicable information found in the related Species table record.

It is really a lot easier to develop and maintain a system if such things are managed by the database itself (the status quo), rather than by the software which manipulates the database (your proposal). Now, I am not the least bit upset that you (or any other user) would not make that distinction, but it is so.

"Any technology, properly applied, is indistinguishable from magic by the consumer."

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