One of the things that is common between most genealogy databases is
that they will have one screen were you log all the information for a
given person and then (maybe) have a link to a source record.
I'm trying to create a database where you have tables that record facts
and then link those facts to a person record. For example, I'll have
tables for Birth, Marriage, Military Service, Tax Records, etc. They
are separate tables because each type has a different dataset. The
data associated with a birth event is different than the data
associated with military service.
I need to be able to tie all these records together and attach to a
single person. For example, Mary Sue Trekkie may have a couple of
records for birth (bible record, birth certificate), a record for
marriage (marriage license), a couple of record for a will (being
mentioned in, her own will).
So when displaying the information for Mary Sue Trekkie I need to
display a list of records from all these tables.
I am assuming that I would do this using some kind of linking table
where there is a field that ID's the table and then another field that
gives the specific record ID. I was thinking that I could have a field
in the linking table, perhaps the primary key even, that gives the name
of the table that is in Access (tblBirth, tblMarriage, etc).
I'm not exactly sure how I would get the right information to pull from
the right table and display it in either a Form or a Report in Access.
Does anyone have any suggestions?
Do you know of a better way to organize this stuff?
I considered having a single table for events (birth, marriage, school,
death, etc) but each type of data just doesn't fit a single table
structure. I know there has to be a way to do this.
Any indeas would be greatly appreciated.
Tammy