join file--where are the records stored?

[susan]

I'm creating a report card for an elementary school. It is K-6 with 2 or more teachers for each grade. Each grade has its own set of exclusive skills they report on (although there are a few skills every grade reports on).

I have the following files:

--Students.fp5 with student demographics, including graduation year and student_id.

--Skills.fp5 with fields for the skill, the score earned, the grade the skill is scored in, and the school year

--Reports.fp5 which is a join file between the two.

I also have Teachers.fp5 with the teacher name and grade taught. (I'm thinking this should be an attribute of Skills.fp5, but I don't know how to account for more than one teacher scoring the same skill...?)

Am I correct to assume that while each student will only be listed once in the Students.fp5 file, they (through their ID) will be listed multiple times in the Skills.fp5 file since they each will be scored on many skills?

Also, for the skills that are reported on in more than one year...My plan is to have a field for Grade in Skills.fp5 that contains the grade the skill is assessed. If the skill is assessed in more than one grade, I would list them all, separated by commas and the Find step in any script I write should work...yes?

Thanks for any help.

Susan

[Fitch]

It sounds like you don't really need the Reports "join" file. Each student has a unique id, and is related (by their unique id) to many records in the Skills file, each of which has the same id as the student record. If you enter skills via a portal in the Students file, the id will automatically be entered into the Skills file.

As for Teachers, you may want to list them in a field in Skills, or in a field in Students. Hard to say. The way to know is to figure out what kind of reports you want to generate.

I don't understand your question about Finds. When you search for a certain skill in the Skills file, say Underwater Basket Weaving, it will find the matches in ALL grades unless you specifically narrow the search. And that you do, not by comma-separated words, but by creating new Find Requests.

Hope that helped a little.