Re: [MS_AccessPros] Switchlist program question

 

Bob-

The biggest challenge designing a database application is getting the table design right.  Do that, and everything else will be easy.

It sounds like you have two subjects: Industries and Spots.  Industries should be in its own table, and each industry should appear exactly once.  The table should have a Primary Key (an Autonumber will do), and then you use that key to link to the Spots table.  Each Spot will have a unique ID with a linking field to the key in Industries to identify which industry owns this spot and perhaps another linking key to a Locations table to identify where in your layout this spot resides.  Relevant data for a spot would be whether it is inbound or outbound.

Finally, you perhaps need separate Movement and Trains and FreightCars table to identify a particular shipment and the train used to move the shipment and the cars that made up the movement.  Each movement would have a relevant a date and time.  The Movement table gives you a history of what moved where.

Hope that gets you started…

John Viescas, Author

Microsoft Access 2010 Inside Out

Microsoft Access 2007 Inside Out

Microsoft Access 2003 Inside Out

Building Microsoft Access Applications 

SQL Queries for Mere Mortals 

http://www.viescas.com/ 

(Paris, France)

On Aug 8, 2014, at 5:38 PM, bburke@swiftaz.net [MS_Access_Professionals] <MS_Access_Professionals@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

I am new to this group, and an admitted novice in the workings of Access.  I am running Access 2010 on a Windows 8 64 bit OS. I am using Access 2010 Inside Out as a reference, and I have written some very small and simple programs in Access 2000.

I am attempting to write a simple(?) program to generate a switchlist with which to operate my model railroad layout.  I have made up several tables (Location, Industries, Freight Cars, and Commodities). I will have several Industry tables, one for each train assigned to that series of Locations.  One of the challenges I have is that one industry could have two tracks, i.e. an inbound track for empties and an outbound track for loads, so an industry could be duplicated 2 or 3 times in a table, but have a unique spot number. In addition, an industry could have one track with up to five doors on which a specific freight car could be spotted.  The end result would be a switchlist that tells the conductor of the North Local, for example, which industries at which locations receive which freight car at which spot number, and whether the car is an empty or a load, and the commodity being shipped or recieved.  In addition, I would like the program to remember which cars were spotted during the previous session, and a certain percentage will be available for pick up at the next session. I know the tables will need to be linked, and relationships established.  Currently the Industry tables has the following fields: IndustryID, IndustryName, SpotNumber (always unique), and what the spot is (Door, Dock, Spout, etc.)). I don't expect anyone to write the program, but any help in putting together the Industry tables would be most appreciated.

Thanks for reading all of this,

Bob Burke

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Posted by: John Viescas <johnv@msn.com>

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