I apologize for the OT question, but I've asked this on several other forums and
gotten no constructive replies. If someone wants to refer me to a better place to ask
this, I'd be grateful.
I've got a complicated question, which probably has a simple answer, so I'll try to
avoid wasting everyone's time as best as I can.
I've read tons of stuff about relational database design - normalization, integrity,
etc., but none of it is really relevant to my question.
My question is this: When you're designing the user interface for a browser-based data
entry system, what's the best way to accomodate linked records? There's loads of info
out there on querying and reports, but everyone seems to ignore the fact that the data
has to get into the database somehow, and often it's via online entry.
For example: You have a table of Service Calls and a table of Companies. Each Service
Call can be linked to one or two companies (trust me, there's a reason). You're using
an Auto-Incremented Integer, call it 'comp_id', for a Primary Key for Companies. Now,
when someone goes to enter a Service Call online, how do they establish the
relationship to the correct Company or Companies? If you have two attributes in
Service Calls, say 'comp1' and 'comp2', surely you don't expect the person entering
the data to just happen to know the correct value of 'comp_id'? But you can't pop up a
list of 1,000 'comp_id' and 'comp_name' combinations, either. What am I missing? (I
have the feeling I'm going to feel stupid when I get the answer, so let's go ahead and
get it over with...)
Sorry for the long-winded question, and thanks in advance for any suggestions.
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