Part of my database will be tracking equipment orders in my office. There are two types of orders that the user might enter: accountable or unaccountable. Both types of orders need certain common fields entered, but each order has a handful of unique fields as well.
In addition, for accountable orders, we need to keep track of each individual item, as we will need to assign each item a unique ID when it is received. For unaccountable orders, we don't need to keep track of each item, but we do need to store information about each line item. So I probably need a linked table for accountable items and another linked table for unaccountable line items.
My question is this: Should I put all orders in one table, and only fill in the fields needed for that type of order, and then make two 1-to-many relations to the two tables I would need? Or should I make two separate order tables, each with its own linked table, and then re-combine the two tables using queries (for reports and such)?
I could probably do it either way, but in your experience, which would be better and easier to manage?
--Ryan
In addition, for accountable orders, we need to keep track of each individual item, as we will need to assign each item a unique ID when it is received. For unaccountable orders, we don't need to keep track of each item, but we do need to store information about each line item. So I probably need a linked table for accountable items and another linked table for unaccountable line items.
My question is this: Should I put all orders in one table, and only fill in the fields needed for that type of order, and then make two 1-to-many relations to the two tables I would need? Or should I make two separate order tables, each with its own linked table, and then re-combine the two tables using queries (for reports and such)?
I could probably do it either way, but in your experience, which would be better and easier to manage?
--Ryan
