I understand relational database design, but hope to find a solution simpler
than the one I am developing. The application is using Microsoft Access
2003. It requires keeping names and addresses of parish members. What I
would like to do is to have one table contain the the first and last name,
and the birthday of each member. There would also be a key field. Another
table would contain the address, phone, etc.

The approach I started with is to use a unique ID field for the address
table, and to use the same ID value in a field within the names table. In
addition, the names table has an additional filed to identify the member as
being the husband, wife, or child. The combination of ID and Type filed form
the key for the names table. To extract the information, I create a query
with the appropriate criteria to identify the husband, wife, and child. This
works for retrieving the information, but to change it, I need to create a
form which would accept the changes and then has a routing to update the
appropriate table as needed.

Since this would seem to be a fairly common type of requirement, I am asking
the list for a possible solution that is already available. Note that I
don't want to include the wife's first and last name as additional fields in
the address table since I also need to have lists of committee members. If I
retype the names in new tables, I might make errors in retyping, and the
idea of a relational database is gone!

Thank you for any help.

Peter
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The NoSpin Group
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