Best way to establish tables

[goslincm]

Hi, I have to create a database to compare populations, revenues and expenditures among various counties, cities, and villages. If the population decreases from one year to the next, score it as a value 1, otherwise it gets a value two. Likewise with the revenues and expenditures. Being new to access, I'm not sure the best way to do that.

Can anyone offer any suggestions?

 

[fneily]

Use Excel.
But if you must use Access, how about this. One table with a primary key. The primary key will reflect if the record belongs to a county, city or village. eg. Cty + a number for county, City + number for city, V + number for village. So some records would look like: (first row are field names)
ID Name Pop2005 Rev2005 Expen2005 Pop2006 Rev2006 Expen2006
Cty1 Calvert 200 $5000 $2000 250 $8000 $4000
V1 WaWa 24 $100 etc.

Then on a form or report, you can then calculate the increase or decrease from year to year and assign a 1 or 2. Note: you would not store this number, it is calculated.
So you could use this table for about 84 years.

But as I first said. You can do this in Excel. You can also create forms and design reports in Excel.

 

[goslincm]

So after the years pop2005 and pop2006 are done, I go into the table and empty the 2005,2006 info into an archieve table so I can then continue on with 2007,2008, etc.?

 

[fneily]

You can but you don't have to. If that's all the data you're keeping, a table has 255 columns. So you have 253 left for each entity and each entity takes 3 columns. 253 divided by 3 is approx. 84 years. So you can do analysis between any set of years or groups of years.
Again, if this is all you're doing, Access seems like overkill.