From a different database I have imported two tables, Design Fee Phases and Design Fee Schedules. These should probably belong to a parent, Design Fees.
There is no Design Fees in my previous database so nothing to import, there.
If I want to organize properly for easy page building, what do I do? Is there a way to sort-of internally combine the two upward into a parent and then relate them?
Should I not worry so much about the table structure?
Do I have no choice because I’m coming from a different database and want to keep that data?
Most importantly you are unlikely to be a Rutabega, this is a new term for me so I had to Google it and I see it’s a root vegetable. It’s possible you’re a Swed living in Longbeach but I think it’s unlikely .
Before advising on the “root” forward I’d like to understand a little more about what these two tables hold (example of fields), could you share what sort of data is in them, how many records they hold (100s or 10,000s?)and what is your goal with this data? A little more background would be useful.
Its not clear to me what a “DESIGN FEE” is when it’s a parent record for example? Is it like a project which has both phases and schedules associated to it?
Certainly there have been occasions where I’ve previously restructured data when importing and I’ve created new parents and relationships so it’s definitely “doable”. It’s also possible to do all the fixing of the data in Tadabase but personally I prefer to fix it up outside and import it in clean.
Those are probably bad examples, so let me use Payable Bills and Receivable Invoices instead.
Each has maybe 50 columns and maybe 3000 rows. Payable Bills has fields like Vendor Name, Item, Tax, Subtotal, and Total, etc. Receivable Invoices has fields like Service Performed, Date, Customer, Subtotal, Total, etc.
Both would seem to fall under a parent table, Finances.
What would you store in the parent table Finances in this example? I appreciate it seems like an overarching “parent-like” heading but what would it’s purpose be? What fields do you think would be in the Finance table? I’m assuming the Finance table might be the child of the Company table. If so, you may want to ask yourself what data would be held in the Finance table that you wouldn’t want to hold in the Company table (my point being could you just not have a finance table?)AND the other important question is whether this finance table is really necessary if there is only ever going to be 1 record per customer in it, or would there be more (in which case you would need to have it’s own table).
Also, your previous point about combining and creating a parent table, I’ve certainly done that on a number of occasions and I do it externally in something like Excel and with the volumes of data youre talking about that is certainly very achievable, ie importing data from two files and combining it into a new table then export to CSV and import into Tadabase populating the joins fields that you’re created.
I may not have explained that very well or I may not have grasp your question. If you fancy jumping on a quick call some time I’m happy to do that if you want to DM me,
Sorry for my own tardy response, ha ha – I’m not sure how I missed this two weeks ago.
You explain very well, thank you, and I wish I’d seen it at the time. I came to the same clarifying questions you’ve asked, and ended up simplifying my tables a lot and not worrying about overarching parents yet. I figure it’s bad practice to institute things “just in case” when there’s not even a purpose I can define.
