alias

[Frank Grime]

Hello Everyone
I'm hoping someone can help me out. I'm trying to setup a
database to enter some products and volume and price. We
buy the products from different sources. The different
vendors use different names but they are essentially the
same product. I want the data entry person to be able to
just go down the list of each vendor and enter the data
but then I want to be able to do queries to total the
different products. For example one vendor's invoice
looks like this:
hamburger
pickles
buns

The next vendor does this
80% (which is hamburger)
Dill (which is pickles)
Bread (which is buns)
Obviously I over simplified the invoices but can someone
help me with this?

 

[Rolls]

You will need to create a new table to convert each supplier's item to your
more generic item description. When you join this table to the data entry
table you will be able to summarize by your generic item descriptions.

ItemID
Supplier
ProductDescription
GenericDescription

To further normalize your data you could also create the generic description
table, then reference the GenericDescriptionID as the foreign key in your
cross-reference table.