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Old April 14th, 2010, 07:06 PM posted to microsoft.public.access.tablesdbdesign
Jeff Boyce
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Posts: 8,621
Default Table relationships - hoping to just enter ID once in form

Uhmmm? Are you saying that you are using 15 tables to store 15 assessment
measures' data? If so, what happens when you need to store 16 ... or 12?
If that is your design, you are ensuring that there will be a great deal of
busy work/maintenance, because tables and forms and queries and ... will all
need to be updated.

Access is a relational database, and is optimized to work with
well-normalized data. It sounds like your data structure would benefit from
further normalization.

If "normalization" and "relational" are unfamiliar terms, plan on brushing
up before trying to get Access to help. If you treat Access like a big
spreadsheet, you and Access will have to work overtime to overcome the
'sheet data.

Pay now (learn normalization/relational) or pay later (and again and again,
every time something changes)...

Good luck!

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Access MVP

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"marc" wrote in message
...
I've created a database with about 15 tables for a participant data in a
research study. Each participant will complete the 15 assessment
measures.

My ultimate goal is to create a data entry system whereby a research
assistant can pull up a form and enter an ID number, plus the answers to
the
15 assessment measures.

I know I can create a query to combine all the tables, but it seems like
the
research assistant would have to enter the id and date 15 times (once for
each table pulled in to the query).

Is there a way to just enter the ID number one time and have it apply to
the
relevant tables? thanks so much!