Relating pre-existing tables from different databases?

[Nagasaki]

Hello,

Right now I am working with two different databases, one called "membership" and one called "mailing." These two databases were created independently from eachother by a former employee. As of now we have some of the same people in both databases (all of our members are in our mailing database, but not all of our mailing contacts are in our member database). Because they aren't linked, we often will look someone up in our membership database, only to find that they have a completely different address listed in the mailing one, which frustrates everyone to no end.

What would be the most simple way to link our member and mailing address fields so that when we modify the contact info in one database, it will automatically modify in the other? I feel comfortable setting up relationships (haha, I say that now) when I am building the database from scratch, but I am unsure how to approach two complete databases. Is it possible to create relationships in databases already created independent of one another?

If I am not making any sense, please let me know and I will clarify! TIA!!

[T-Square]

I am sure that someone with greater skill than I will have an idea on how you can create a synching mechanism to accomplish this.

I would recommend instead that you re-structure your databases so that you store information related to people (regardless of whether they are members or mailees) in one database table, with linking mechanisms for the different functions. That way, when you deal with people, they all reside in one place in the system.

Were you to follow this approach, your biggest task would be to ensure that duplicative entries would get correctly stripped from the resulting table. But once it was done, you wouldn't have to worry about it again.

HTH,

David