Hi,
I'm in the UK and at an early stage in learning the basics of database
construction. I've been looking at some relational 'Contact' example
files and their processing. The files are US-centric and the
consequences of that are confusing me a little.

In my current simplistic UK oriented view of Contact field
requirements, I envisage a need for a limited number of ID fields.
Maybe 'CustomerID' and 'BusinessID' will do it.

There are many ID fields in the example database. 'Organizational ID
Number', 'Government ID Number', CompanyID, BusinessID, as well as the
'CustomerID'. My guess is that some of these are based on US legal
requirements regarding business information and not added to the
database for internal processing purposes. Can anyone confirm this one
way or the other?

There is also a 'TargetID' field which may be there only for internal
processing reasons.

Any clarification offered would be much appreciated.
--
Kind regards,
Jayne Bartram

<jaynebartram (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote

I can't see your sample file but I think those ID fields might be indexes,
that is to say, in your main table they are foreign keys for a primary key
in the appropriate lookup table. For example, you might have a 'CustomerID'
field in your main table to contain values from an 'ID' primary key field in
a 'tblCustomer' lookup table. I don't think nationality is an issue in this
case.

Regards,
Keith.
www.keithwilby.co.uk

You probably have tables of
Customers
Organisations
Businesses
Companies

The CompanyID & BusinessID in the Customer table points to the Company and
Business that person belongs to. When you get to creating a query based on
those 3 tables you will be able see the persons name, company & business.

By the way, when you design your tables, you will save a lot of heartache by
not having spaces in field names. If you do have a space you will have to
put sqaure brackets round the field when you refer to it so
GovernmentIDNumber rather than [Government ID Number]

<jaynebartram (AT) googlemail (DOT) com> wrote

Thanks very much for the clear explanations.
It's helped my understanding a lot.
Much appreciated
--
Kind regards,
Jayne Bartram