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From: JM on 4 Sep 2005 11:00
I am building a new db and am battling with the following: Should I use one
table named tblPersons or two separate tables such as tblEmployees and
tblFamilyMembers. The former, I believe, would be a higher normal form,
however, the latter may be more intuitive when developing, coding, etc. Any
thoughts?

Regards,

JM
From: Douglas J. Steele on 4 Sep 2005 11:25
As usual, the answer is "it depends".

If the attributes in which you're interested for both are essentially the
same, then a single Persons table makes sense. If not, then having to
separate entities may make more sense.

From a programming perspective, if you have a single table, but it makes
more sense to have the separate ones, you can always have queries that
return only the Employees, or only the Family Members, and use the queries
wherever you would otherwise have used the table.

--
Doug Steele, Microsoft Access MVP
http://I.Am/DougSteele
(no e-mails, please!)



"JM" <JM(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0567CC87-34E6-4DC8-BF6B-3477C6B11C9E(a)microsoft.com...
>I am building a new db and am battling with the following: Should I use
>one
> table named tblPersons or two separate tables such as tblEmployees and
> tblFamilyMembers. The former, I believe, would be a higher normal form,
> however, the latter may be more intuitive when developing, coding, etc.
> Any
> thoughts?
>
> Regards,
>
> JM


From: Bruce Rusk on 4 Sep 2005 16:48
Could one person be both at the same time? If so, would you want to change
the information in two tables or one when it changes?

"JM" <JM(a)discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:0567CC87-34E6-4DC8-BF6B-3477C6B11C9E(a)microsoft.com...
>I am building a new db and am battling with the following: Should I use
>one
> table named tblPersons or two separate tables such as tblEmployees and
> tblFamilyMembers. The former, I believe, would be a higher normal form,
> however, the latter may be more intuitive when developing, coding, etc.
> Any
> thoughts?
>
> Regards,
>
> JM


From: peregenem on 5 Sep 2005 07:49

Bruce Rusk wrote:
> Should I use one
> table named tblPersons or two separate tables such as tblEmployees and
> tblFamilyMembers.

I think you should use a Persons table to hold the common attributes
AND separate tables such as Employees, Families, etc. Do a Google
serach on 'subclassing'.

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