I'm new to FM, but have used Access for years. I'm making a database that tracks responses to a questionair. I've made the following databases (tables): employee (key field employeeid), questionair info (Key field questionaireid: contains information about the particular questionair filled out by the employee), questions (Key field questionid: contains all the possible questions), questionaire results (Related fields employeeid and questionairid; contains all the results from the filled out forms). I can't figure out how to do much of anything with this though. For instance, I don't know which of these I should use as the "Main" database Which db should I use as the main one? How best to set all this up? Thanks for your help.

It sounds like the Questionaire file would be the Main one. Each questionaire would be a record, and its child records would be in the questions file. It's sort of like:

Questionaire = Invoice

Questions = Products

Responses = Line Items

Employees = Customers

Well, actually it's slightly more complicated because it's more like each Questionaire is a like a product, which is composed of component parts (questions). But you get the idea (I hope).

Hmm. I would question (heh) making the Questions a single field. After all, if a question gets changed, old answers are no longer valid.

I would personally make each question a seperate field, and each record is one person's responses to each of the questions. So, you would have:

Question 1: {Answer}

Question 2: {Answer}

etc.

If you needed to run a different questionaire later, leave the old fields intact, but simply create a new layout with new Question fields, or duplicate the old database, delete all the records and change the questions. The former lets you keep all the responses to all the questionaires together (while hiding old ones from the users), while the latter lets you organize each questionaire into seperate, smaller databases.