[AccessD] This seems to get me often

John R Bartow jbartow at winhaven.net
Tue Dec 23 18:13:04 CST 2014


Tina,
IIRC it was Arthur F. who posted a unique solution to this issue many years
ago. It had something to with one table holding both people and
organizations and having a FK to a lookup that defined which they were.
There was also a M2M table that allowed individuals in the main table to be
linked to organizations in the same table and vice versa.

I forget all the details but I thought it was brilliant solution to a common
problem. The issues it would have solved for me were numerous. Unfortunately
the app I was thinking it would help with was too involved to change the BE
structure that much anymore. (I had gone down the Org PK < FK > ClientOrg <
FK > Client PK structure route.)

ARTHUR! Help me out here :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Tina Norris
Fields
Sent: Tuesday, December 23, 2014 5:05 PM
To: DatabaseAdvisors-Access
Subject: [AccessD] This seems to get me often

Hi,

I do keep having this sort of problem to solve.  An example would be that a
donor could be an individual or an organization.  So, a donation record
might have an individual ID as an FK or it might have an organization ID as
an FK.  I'm uncomfortable with setting up a table where one of two FKs will
be blank.  Another example would be that a client of a law firm could be an
individual or an organization.  Another example would be that a telephone
could be associated with an individual, or a household, or an organization.
What is the logical way to handle these?  What am I not seeing?

Thanks for your guidance.

TNF

--
Tina Norris Fields
tinanfields-at-torchlake-dot-com
231-322-2787

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