Expert: Scottgem - 3/4/2004

Question
Hi, and thank you for the quick response.

The images are ghost images of a workstation.
I need to track what software is on the image currently, and what software I need to put on it during the next image refresh.

Sorry for the lack of clarity.



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Followup To
Question -
I have been asked to design a database for tracking images.

Basically, I need to house all image names and locations. Then I need to have a list of all the contents of the images. These contents will change, and not all the images will have the same content at the same time until they are updated.

I need to be able to query what a particular image needs, and what the image has on it (separate queries)

If something new comes out, I should be able to type it in one place and update all the images.

My database skills aren't terrible, but I am at a total loss as to how to lay this out. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

David S
Answer -
I'm not sure I follow what you need. An image is a visual representation of something. An image doesn't usually change. An image might be replaced with a different image.

I can see an app where you store info about an image. Part of this info is a list of attributes for an image. In such a case I would have a table with info about each image and an attributes table with fields of ImageID and Attribute.

Hope this helps,
Scott<>

Please don't forget to provide feedback for this response (either by rating or followup). It helps me help people better if I know how my advice worked.

Answer
Ahh now that is understandable. Frankly, I would handle it differently I would create a new record for each image. Use a structure like I mentioned where your main table is info about each image and you have an attributes table that lists the software or whatever else you want to store about each image. If you use referential integrity you can delete the image record and delete all the other attribute records.

Hope this helps,
Scott<>