I have accumulated a very large electronics parts supply. I would like to
create or find a way to catalogue these parts using access.
"Very large" is... what? 1000 parts? 10,000,000 parts? Somewhere in
between?
You're asking a very brief question which requires a much larger
answer, probably a larger answer than this peer-support forum can
reasonably be asked to provide.
You'll need to identify the "Entities" - real-life things, events, or
people - of importance; this list would probably include Parts,
Suppliers, Manufacturers, perhaps more (since I don't know your
business needs). Each type of Entity would get its own table.
For each Entity you would identify Attributes; one attribute would be
the Primary Key, a unique value (text or numeric) which unambiguously
identifies one record in the table; the other attributes would be
those atomic, single-valued chunks of information that you need to
know about the entity. I don't know what those might be in your case -
part description maybe? probably no more than 15 or 20 attributes
(fields) per table.
Then you'll need to identify the relationships, e.g. each Part has
only one Manufacturer but any manufacturer can make many Parts.
Once you have the tables, you can start of Forms (for onscreen
viewing, editing, and data entry) and Reports (your printed catalog
will be a Report).
Could be a fairly easy job, or a pretty big one, depending on your
needs!
John W. Vinson[MVP]
