I was about to embark on an attendance (presence at school) database with repeating fields until I saw the discussions going on about how taking it relational is the way to go. I'm still thinking that a repeating field with 31 repetitions would handle it fairly simply and be able to total up tardies and absenses.

Is it that bad to head down this road?

Hi,

the bottom line would be do you want to report or search the information stored in the repeating fields.

Yes, you can get totals of repetitions, but if you want a report of who was tardy over a specific period, broken down by class, then you have no hope with repeating fields.

If you do then definitely create a relational database.

If you give us some more information, we can point you in the right direction.

Thanks for responding. It was the Nbrown "repeating field" post that got me thinking. His/her db was a little more elaborate than I need. I think the relational way sound more thorough and scalable (I'm sure someone's gonna want to track it eventually) So, would it be something like this:

A student db with every kid which relates to:

A month db with months (from sept-jun) for each kid which relates to:

A days db with day for each of the kids month.

These would all be related by a student id. I'm not sure, I kind of get lost thinking about it.

You probably don't need a "Month" database, just a "Days." The days can easily be searched and sorted by week or month or year when needed.

Yeh, I'm the relationship is starting to clear up for me a bit. Would it be wise to split this attendance days by primary and middle school since we're talking about 175 school days X 240 kids. That's around 42,000 records! They won't be storing much info, but it still seems bulky.

42,000 records that contain, what, 3 fields -- date, child id, and attended (and maybe a reason for absence?) -- should not be a problem.

You guys are cool. I look forward to hopefully giving back some support in the future...