Design Question

  • Thread starter Thread starter DUNNER7
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DUNNER7

Me again! I am prepraring to construct a school database, but would like
some advice with a structure issue. I operate an alternative school within
the Pittsburgh Public schools for about 300 students. They will have records
for discipline, classes, parent contacts/phone calls, attendance while they
attend my school. My 300 students may come or go throughout the year back to
their "home school" depending upon the length of time they are assigned to me
to make up course work or for expulsions from their home school. There are
10,000 to 13,000 students within the demographic area that I serve (grades
6-12), so throughout the 09-10 school year I might see 1200 to 2000 of the
total number of kids.

Here is my question. I have the necessary demographic information for the
10,000-13,000 students in the district's student information system. I would
like to create a table with every student's necessary information. However,
we will only be serving a small number of the students at any one time (300).
Would I make two seperate student tables? 1. with all students and maybe put
a checkbox to designate them as active when/if they come to my school. 2.
Take the "active" students into a seperate table and use that to perform all
of my operations with discipline, attendance, etc. I am not an expert, but
it seems that a table of 300 would be faster than a table of 10,000.

The alternative would be to enroll each student as they are assigned to my
school, but that would mean creating a form to fill out each student as they
entered and entering all of the demographic information into a table. If the
information is already there is seems more efficient to just locate their
name and place a check to activate them into our database.

Sorry so long, but wanted to give as much info as possible.

Thanks,
Del Dobbs
 
Another suggestion. Use two tables, the one with the district's student
information ant the other with active/inactive students. Have a form to
lookup and append from the district table when a new student is enrolled.
Saves time, but ask for update at enrollment.
 
Me again! I am prepraring to construct a school database, but would like
some advice with a structure issue. I operate an alternative school within
the Pittsburgh Public schools for about 300 students. They will have records
for discipline, classes, parent contacts/phone calls, attendance while they
attend my school. My 300 students may come or go throughout the year back to
their "home school" depending upon the length of time they are assigned to me
to make up course work or for expulsions from their home school. There are
10,000 to 13,000 students within the demographic area that I serve (grades
6-12), so throughout the 09-10 school year I might see 1200 to 2000 of the
total number of kids.

Here is my question. I have the necessary demographic information for the
10,000-13,000 students in the district's student information system. I would
like to create a table with every student's necessary information. However,
we will only be serving a small number of the students at any one time (300).
Would I make two seperate student tables? 1. with all students and maybe put
a checkbox to designate them as active when/if they come to my school. 2.
Take the "active" students into a seperate table and use that to perform all
of my operations with discipline, attendance, etc. I am not an expert, but
it seems that a table of 300 would be faster than a table of 10,000.

The alternative would be to enroll each student as they are assigned to my
school, but that would mean creating a form to fill out each student as they
entered and entering all of the demographic information into a table. If the
information is already there is seems more efficient to just locate their
name and place a check to activate them into our database.

Sorry so long, but wanted to give as much info as possible.
Click to expand...

I would NOT store the same information in two seperate tables. The student's
demographic information doesn't change when they become active or inactive.
I'd simply have two tables in a one-to-one relationship; the demographic table
would be the "parent" table, with a studentID and all of the district's
information, and you would have a separate, much smaller table with just the
StudentID (as a link to the demographics) primary key, a yes/no field for
Active, and any other information that is proper for just your assigned
students (date assigned, date returned to the home school, etc.).

You could then have your discipline, attendance, contacts etc. tables related
one to many to this table.

Note that in a properly indexed and designed database, a 10000 row table is
very small, and a 300 row table is miniscule. Unless you have demonstrated
problems with performance... don't worry about it; and if you do... we'll help
fix them.
 
This group is for free discussions and help. You are not only in violation
of the spirit of these newsgroups, you have not demonstrated in your
previous postings that your services are worth money. They are certainly
not anywhere near the level of John, Allen, and others who make their
considerable expertise freely available here.
 
Steve said:
Hello Del,

I provide fee-based help with Access applications. I could build your
school database for you for a very modest fee. If you would like my help,
please contact me at (e-mail address removed).

BTW, I am in Clarion, PA; roughly 100 miles north of you.

Steve
Click to expand...

These newsgroups are provided by Microsoft for FREE peer to peer support.
There are many highly qualified individuals who gladly help for free. Stevie
is not one of them, but he is the only one who just does not get the idea of
"FREE" support. He offers questionable results at unreasonable prices. If he
was any good, the "thousands" of people he claims to have helped would be
flooding him with work, but there appears to be a continuous drought and he
needs to constantly grovel for work.

A few gems gleaned from the Word New User newsgroup over the Christmas
holidays to show Stevie's "expertise" in Word.


Dec 17, 2008 7:47 pm

Word 2007 ..........
In older versions of Word you could highlght some text then go to Format -
Change Case and change the case of the hoghloghted text. Is this still
available in Word 2007? Where?
Thanks! Steve


Dec 22, 2008 8:22 pm

I am designing a series of paystubs for a client. I start in landscape and
draw a table then add columns and rows to setup labels and their
corresponding value. This all works fine. After a landscape version is
completed, I next need to design a portrait version. Rather than strating
from scratch, I'd like to be able to cut and paste from the landscape
version and design the portrait version.
Steve


Dec 24, 2008, 1:12 PM

How do you protect the document for filling in forms?
Steve


One of my favourites:
Dec 30, 2008 8:07 PM - a reply to stevie
(The original poster asked how to sort a list and stevie offered to create
the OP an Access database)
Yes, you are right but a database is the correct tool to use not a
spreadsheet.
Click to expand...


Not at all. If it's just a simple list then a spreadsheet is perfectly
adequate...




John... Visio MVP
 
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