Need some advice....

[Himitsu]

Over the years I have put this db together for things I needed to keep track of. Now, I really need it to store lots of info and don't know what the best layout would be. I own an English School in Japan. And we are growing very big very fast. I started with a studentlist file just to keep track of what the students buy. Ie, books, videos, ect... then I expanded to a report card file that the teachers would fill out quartly. Then I portaled that to the student list. You can click on the report card ID# and go to that report. Then, our students pay a montly fee for class. And I wanted to see if a student had paid for a month, or if we had to adjust something. So, that has a portal from the student list that shows each time that student pays and for which month. Then, I needed to keep track of the class that student is in for that year. So I created a ClassList. Now in this class list, it has a portal that connects each student that is in that class, say, Mon. 4:30 class and the are a 10th rank level class. My problem is now, I need to keep track of a roll call system for that class. Those kids only come on that specific day and time. Any advice how I could lay this out and execute it?:?? should I put a feild in the portal for each student with a pull down saying "came", "Absent", "No Show", ect... but those kids come 46 lessons a year. That would be a very wide portal. There has to be a way... I am just to beginner of a user to know how. Any help would be .... super grateful. Even if you want to pick up some cash, I am willing to even pay for some layout help. Thnaks.

[macguys]

I'm assuming that you have a series of related tables (databases). I assume you have one table for coursess, another for students, and another for attendence.

In the attendence database, you relate to the courses database and the student database and include elements for data and a yes/no for attendance.

Am I on the right track?

[Himitsu]

kind of. in that area, I have a studentlist.fp5 that contains all the students ID#s and info. Then I created a classlist.fp5 that has all the classes we have. In that classlist.fp5, I have a portal that relates to a studentlineitem.fp5.

What my question is, how should I make an attendence system that would be efficent. They problem is the fields. Our students only come one day a week. So we have six days a week of dates for classes we teach. I need to be able to see accross the board to see patterns in kids who are absent. The thing is I can create date fields, ie, datefield01 and have it autoenter date then from that, datefield02 I can just use a calculation of "datefield01 + 7" and that will give me the next weeks date. I can do this for all 46 fields. But, when I tie in the records, if you look up a student named "Amy", you see field names and not dates when you relate them. Do you see the problem? I attached a pic. of what I have an idea for.

[Razumovsky]

Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

Unfortunately, this is a pain in the ass, but can be done. You would want 3 files: Students, Classes, and Attendance.

In your Attendance DB, you would have t_ConcatenatedID, and t_attendance

In your students DB, you would have global fields g_ClassId and g_StartDate, as well as all the rest of the general student info fields (StudentID (unique), name, age, address, etc...)

Now the fun part;create 46 concatenated calc fields:

c_week1 [datetotext(g_startdate)&" - " &t_StudentID&" - "&g_ClassID]

c_week2 [datetotext(g_startdate+7)&" - " &t_StudentID & " - "&g_ClassID

c_week3 [datetotext(g_startdate+14)&" - " &t_StudentID & " - "& g_ClassID]...

and create 46 relationships to Attendance DB, all marked "allow creation of related records"

c_Week1::t_ConcatenatedID

c_Week2::t_concatenatedID

c_Week3::t_concatenatedID...

now, put your related :t_attendance fields for all 46 relationships running horizontally across the record of each student in list format.

First, find all students that are in the class and set g_ClassID to your desired classId, and g_StartDate to your desired date(this would be scripted).

now you will be looking at a list layout that has 1 record for each student running vertically down the page in list view, and 46 fields for each student running horizontally for each record, like your drawing. When you click on one of the related t_attendance fields (I would set them up as checkboxes), a new record will automatically be created in AttendanceDB that is related to this specific student, class and date. You are essentially storing each attendance occurence as a "Lineitem" and viewing through related fields.

If students are never involved in more than one class, you could change the global fields to date and text fields specific to each record.

Got the idea?

-Raz