> >
> >
> > Question
> >
> > I am working on a boat sale closing form
> > that will print all of the many forms that the
> > different state agencies and bank require.
> > I am at the early stage so I can change anything at this point
> > Right now I have one file that contains all of the information needed
> > Customer info, lien holder info, boat info color length, propulsion etc,
> > Is there a compelling reason to break this into several files? Lien holder file, customer file, boat file, etc The table will never be huge maybe over many years it will Have thousands of records not millions not even hundreds of thousands
>
> Professional software developers are supposed to know to normalize data files. This should be a new topic.
>
> The sale is one file. The customer is another file. The boat may have been sold with extras. These could be in yet another file. The boat base price plus the sum of the extras is the final sales price on the invoice. Very typical stuff.
>
> If you have all data in one record, multiple people cannot work with the record at the same time.
>
> Mike Yearwood
>
>
>


Mike,

Normalization does not really affect the ability for multiple users to work on a single record. That has to do with your buffering/record locking strategy and how you separate the data entry tasks. With an optimistic record locking strategy, user1 could work with fields 1 - 5, user2 could work on fields 6 - 13, etc. No conflicts would occur.

Keven,

Mike is correct in saying that these records should be normailzed. For example, let's say that the boat being sold is a Kirby 25 - how many Kirby 25's are going to be sold. This is a fairly common boat in these waters (Bruce Kirby is the designer of the Laser and designed an America's Cup yacht.) If this is the case, you don't want the users to type "Kirby 25" as the type of boat for each sale - you would normalize this out into a "Product" table. The "Kirby 25" would simply represent a product in that table. If you are selling that boat with an inventory of sales, the Main would be another record, the Jib would be another, the 'chute would be another. Sales are Sales are Sales. The table sturcture for grocery store sales would be very similar to the type of structure you would use for boat sales.

For more on normalizing tables, take a look at this article:

http://www.datamodel.org/NormalizationRules.html

Ken
You shall know the truth - and the truth shall set you free. (John 8:33)