Here's the background on my situation. The question follows ---
We have 600 units of mail going from our business to various Post
Offices every morning. Every unit is accompanied by a paper
Verification form which is signed and dated by a postal employee
and returned to our office as proof of delivery.
The Verification contains a 24 character barcode which holds a
non-unique 5 digit postal zip code at pos 5-9, and a unique 10-
digit control number at pos 14-23. The other chars are not
essential. As the units leave our office, we will scan the
Verifications to record the barcode info and a date stamp. When
the drivers return the Verifications the next day, we will scan
them again and date stamp the return.
Any time the barcode is scanned, the onscreen form must display
the 10-digit control number, zip code, and post office
name/address associated with that zip code. Printed reports will
show this info also.
One table (PostalInfo) will contain records with Zip, Name,
Address, City, of 50 or more post offices. This table will change
very little once entered. Another table (ScannedInfo) will
contain the scanned barcode information, 600 new records each
day.
Here's the crux: Should I define fields for zip and control
numbers in ScannedInfo, then associate string functions with them
to parse the data from the barcode field? If so, how does that
data get permanently written to those fields, replacing the
function?
Or can I just store the unparsed barcode string, and parse it as
needed in queries or forms? I think that I need to have the
parsed zip and control numbers stored in their own fields in
ScannedInfo so I can set a relationship to the zip code in the
Postal table, and speed searches and queries. This database will
grow by 3000 records weekly, and at least two months history
needs to be available.
Any suggestions will be read with gratitude by this newbie.