converting DOS dbase program into Access

Hi all,

Disclaimer: I have no database experience. However, I am a computer tech
and so therefore was given the following problem.

I have a customer who's been using a DOS dbase program, Disk-Count's
Business Contacts and Information Manager. This company apparently no
longer exists. My customer want to use something a little more updated than
a DOS-based program, so I thought we'd use Access.
I've imported the tables into Access just fine. The problem is cross
referencing. For example, there is the master contact table with customer
number, name, address, and comment fields and then a comment table with
customer number and additional comments that correspond to the master table.
How do I get the comment table linked or merged or whatever into the comment
field of the master table?

I hope I've explained this well enough, I've confused myself writing it.

Thanks for any thoughts on this matter!

Denise

re: converting DOS dbase program into Access

"Denise" <vtbruinsfan@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:IYWob.812$Bf7.836832@news1.news.adelphia.net. ..[color=blue]
> Hi all,
>
> Disclaimer: I have no database experience. However, I am a computer tech
> and so therefore was given the following problem.
>
> I have a customer who's been using a DOS dbase program, Disk-Count's
> Business Contacts and Information Manager. This company apparently no
> longer exists. My customer want to use something a little more updated[/color]
than[color=blue]
> a DOS-based program, so I thought we'd use Access.
> I've imported the tables into Access just fine. The problem is cross
> referencing. For example, there is the master contact table with customer
> number, name, address, and comment fields and then a comment table with
> customer number and additional comments that correspond to the master[/color]
table.[color=blue]
> How do I get the comment table linked or merged or whatever into the[/color]
comment[color=blue]
> field of the master table?
>
> I hope I've explained this well enough, I've confused myself writing it.[/color]

You don't really want to merge them into the comment field of the master
table, do you? The two tables have customer number in common as a
means of linking them together. When you want to see the additional
comments relating to a specific customer you can use a query that joins
the two tables via the customer number field.

re: converting DOS dbase program into Access

Join the two tables in a Query . . .
"Denise" <vtbruinsfan@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:IYWob.812$Bf7.836832@news1.news.adelphia.net. ..[color=blue]
> Hi all,
>
> Disclaimer: I have no database experience. However, I am a computer tech
> and so therefore was given the following problem.
>
> I have a customer who's been using a DOS dbase program, Disk-Count's
> Business Contacts and Information Manager. This company apparently no
> longer exists. My customer want to use something a little more updated[/color]
than[color=blue]
> a DOS-based program, so I thought we'd use Access.
> I've imported the tables into Access just fine. The problem is cross
> referencing. For example, there is the master contact table with customer
> number, name, address, and comment fields and then a comment table with
> customer number and additional comments that correspond to the master[/color]
table.[color=blue]
> How do I get the comment table linked or merged or whatever into the[/color]
comment[color=blue]
> field of the master table?
>
> I hope I've explained this well enough, I've confused myself writing it.
>
> Thanks for any thoughts on this matter!
>
> Denise
>
>[/color]

re: converting DOS dbase program into Access

"Denise" <vtbruinsfan@hotmail.com> wrote in message news:<IYWob.812$Bf7.836832@news1.news.adelphia.net >...[color=blue]
> Hi all,
>
> Disclaimer: I have no database experience. However, I am a computer tech
> and so therefore was given the following problem.[/color]

Uh oh... someone didn't understand that computer techs are not
necessarily database programmers...

You do "cross-referencing" by creating a Parent-child relationship
between your two tables. The master contact table would be the parent
and have a primary key, which uniquely identified each record. There
would be a corresponding field in the child table, Comments, that
indicated what Contact record it belonged to, something like ContactID
or CommentContactID which would have the same value as the ContactID
in Contacts that it was related to. Time to get out a good book on
database design...

re: converting DOS dbase program into Access

Thanks for your help guys, the query thing seems to be just what I need.

Denise