Help with team stats database

[DG2005]

Hi: I find I am over my head with a database that I've promised our baseball league.

If this sort of question is not allowed, or is something I should be paying for, please let me know.

I've been keeping the ball league stats for 15 years now and have some simple relationships, but we have only ever kept the stats for individual years. I know this will be child's play for most of you, but I can't seem to wrap my brain around how to structure this database and then how to show the results that we want.

We have 27 teams, each with at least 20 players each year, for 15 years, so many different players. Each player has statistics typical of a ball team or any major league team (we're just a beer league, but many want to see their statistics over a long period of time to see how they're doing as they get older. I'm a pitcher, so I know intitively that I'm just getting slower!). All the data is in excel spreadsheets.

How would I go about setting the relationships for something like this. It's the multiple year aspect and players playing on different teams that has me stumped. The league does have a small budget if this is something that should be paid for, but then I don't know what this sort of thing would be worth. A couple hundred dollars? I think if I have a structure, I can play with the rest. Hope someone can help.

Thanks!

[Ender]

Welcome DG2005,

Structurally, the entities in your database would look something like what's shown in this ER diagram (Note that an ER Diagram is not the same as the Table Occurance Graph in FM8.) Each Team has a Team-Year record for each season. This is so that you can remember the team's players for each year as being separate groups. Each Team-Year has many Games that they play in, and each Game has one Team-Year as the Home Team and one Team-Year as the Visitor Team.

Building tables and relationships based on this ER Diagram shouldn't be too hard. But getting your existing flat data to fit into this relational system could be a bit of work. You may have to massage your data to create data for those tables that you don't currently have in your flat spreadsheets.

BTW: You're welcome to ask for help with design concepts or specific scripting, relationship, or calculation problems; there's usually someone around who's willing to give free advice. If you still find yourself over your head, you might post a request in the Services Wanted forum, where you can get in touch with someone who will take your project on for a fee.

[DG2005]

Thanks very much. I appreciate the insights. Since I wouldn't have the knowledge to put this into practice, are you for hire to set up the table structure as per your comments? please pm me if you'd like, or I will simply do as you recommend and look to the help wanted section. Incidentally, is this something that consultants don't normally do since the knowledge to put it together comes with the entire job, a much larger undertaking and worth more than a small fee for consulting advice? Just trying not to step on toes. Thanks again

[DG2005]

just realized that there is no personal messaging system on this forum. Ender, if you want to contact me, you can email me at rhaycock at hyla dot ca

[Lee Smith]

Click on the poster's name, this will take you to their Personal Profile, then hit New Private Topic.

Lee