Greetings,
Your request is a little vauge because you haven't explained your
scenario in enough detail. But your quetions about "if you need to muck
around with sql" is a classic question for rdbms. Mucking around
(spaghetti code) is always an ALTERNATIVE solution. But whenever you
have to "Muck Arounnd/write spaghetti code" a red flag should pop up
immediately because that means that your database is not designed
correctly. It means that your database is not "Normalized" - you have
redundant columns, therefore, you have to hide them, do something with
them - "Muck around with the extra columns that you don't need/want".
The whole concept of database normalization is so that you can avoid
needing to write spaghetti code/ eliminate the need to "Muck around".
So, without knowing anything else about your system, I feel safe to
recommend that the solution is to normalize the database. But here is
the catch - Normalization is a complex subject and somewhat difficult to
grasp. This is the part that Microsoft leaves out in the Notes on its
"Ease of Use applications" like Access.
For simple/basic applications, normalization is usually not an issue.
But once you introduce one molecule of sophistication to your
application, if your DB is not propertly normalized, get ready to write
a ton of spaghetti code. It is doable, but not fun. I am still weaning
myself off of spaghetti code. It takes time.
HTH
Rich
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