More or Fewer Tables?

[Simon UK]

Hi,

I'm creating a print production database and at the 'Job' level I'm confused over what do with the table structure.

Each Job has four different procedures -

Pre Press

Production

Finishing

Delivery

I had thought about keeping all of the these in a single table called 'Job Procedures' related to the 'Job' table by 'jobID', however each of these procedures is slightly different and in the simplest scenario some procedures may have 3 records per job whilst some have just 1 or even none.

That being the case I am worried about creating nulls in some fields and therefore thought I should perhaps create separate tables for each procedure?

Does anybody have any experience with this kind of business or structure?

Kindest regards,

Simon

[Russell Barlow]

Hi,

I'm creating a print production database and at the 'Job' level I'm confused over what do with the table structure.

Each Job has four different procedures -

Pre Press

Production

Finishing

Delivery

I had thought about keeping all of the these in a single table called 'Job Procedures' related to the 'Job' table by 'jobID', however each of these procedures is slightly different and in the simplest scenario some procedures may have 3 records per job whilst some have just 1 or even none.

That being the case I am worried about creating nulls in some fields and therefore thought I should perhaps create separate tables for each procedure?

Does anybody have any experience with this kind of business or structure?

Kindest regards,

Simon

What I've done, for a Media Printer was the following.

Create an artwork table to store information specific to the artwork.

Create an order table to store orders of specific artwork.

Create a PrePress table to store actions/information taken by PrePress on the Order.

Create a Job Combo table to store the Orders being combo'd together to run on the Press.

Create a Shipping Table to store the Orders being Shipped via a Packing Slip.

The above allows for reordering based on the artwork number, reporting on prepress/production, allows for multiple orders to be combo'd together, multiple packing slips for different locations on an order, etc.