[thelist] DB Design question

Joshua Olson joshua at waetech.com
Mon Sep 15 09:32:00 CDT 2003


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bob Haroche" <spambait at onpointsolutions.com>
Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 10:23 AM


> I'm building an animal shelter web application which will will allow
> an administrator to add animals to a database, including breed info. I
> have a table called AnimalBreeds as so:
>
> Question: Assuming there will be a master of list of hundreds of
> ptotential breeds (all inactive at the start) from which the admin
> will make a few score active for regular use, what's a good way of
> designing the (Access) database holding this information.
>
> 1. Adding an active/inactive column to the existing AnimalBreeds
> table?
> 2. Creating an InactiveAnimalBreeds table and moving the records back
> and forth between the two?
> 3. Something else?

Bob,

This will depend on how many shelters the single database manages.  If it's
one, then you are ok with putting the active/inactive column in the
AnimalBreeds table.

I'd recommend you avoid option 2 altogether.

A middle of the road option (and one that will allow for multiple shelters)
is to put just the active/inactive flag in a separate table.

IE, the table may contain 2 columns

BreedID, IsActive

If you have multiple shelters, add ShelterID to that table.

<><><><><><><><><><>
Joshua Olson
Web Application Engineer
WAE Tech Inc.
http://www.waetech.com
706.210.0168



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