First Timer: Product Inventory Table

Anonymous
2013-04-03T18:19:00+00:00

Creating a Product Inventory database to keep track of all the promotional items my company has. So far I have three tables: Suppliers, Inventory, and Event. In my Inventory table I have the following columns (in order): Product ID, Product Name, Description, Logo, Color, Size, Total Quantity, Supplier, Event, and Storage. There are so many different styles of shirts that we have accumulated over the years that for every shirt style there are multiple sizes and sometimes multiple colors. So with that, I have choosen to add the size and/or color to the product name as well as in the size and color columns.

For example:

Men's Wicking Polo: Small                             S

Men's Wicking Polo: Medium                        M

Blue Crinkle Cut Paper                                           Blue

Purple Crinkle Cut Paper                                        Purple

Will this create a problem? I didn't know how else to set it up because it didn't think the database would recognize that five Crinkle Cut Papers are different colors (making it five individual products because of the colors), if the product name on all of them is the same.

One more: I tried to run some relationships like between the Suppliers table and the suppliers column under Inventory but it didn't work.

Microsoft 365 and Office | Access | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments No comments

46 answers

Sort by: Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2013-04-04T17:26:06+00:00

    So for the Color table and ColorProduct table would it look like this?y for me to understand without having someone sitting next to me guiding me through it. 

    Not quite; what you'd have would be this:

    Table Name: Products

    ProductID    ProductName

    42                Men's Wicking Polo

    Table Name: Colors

    Color

    Red

    Blue

    Table Name: Sizes

    Size

    S

    M

    L

    XL

    Table Name: ProductColors

    ProductID    Color

    42               Red

    42               Blue

    Table Name: ProductSizes

    ProductID    Size

    42               S

    42               M

    Table Name: Inventory

    ProductID    Color    Size    StockInHand

    42               Red      S        15

    42               Red     M         8

    42               Blue     M       11

    42               Blue     L          5

    These rows mean that there are 15 small red men's wicking polo shirts in stock, 8 medium red, 11 medium blue and 5 large blue.  Further rows would represent other colors and sizes of men's wicking polo shirts stocked and the same would be true of other products represented in the Products table and for which there would also be rows in the ProductColors and ProductSizes tables which would represent the colors and sizes appropriate to each product.  Note that there must be at least one row in each of these tables, so if we take your example of Crinkle Cut Paper, for which we'll assume a ProductId of 66, there would be one row in Products for this, two rows in ProductColors and, as this product apparently does not have sizes a row in ProductSizes:

    ProductID    Size

    66               N/A

    The Sizes table would have a row with a value N/a.  The ProductSizes table is modelling a many-to-many relationship type between Products and Sizes.  It's key is a composite one of the two columns because, in combination, these must be distinct within the table, e.g. you can only have one row with a ProductID of 42 and a Size of M.  Even if you were to introduce an autonumber column ProductSizeID as the primary key the other two columns would still be a key, what's known as a candidate key, so would have to be included in a unique index to prevent duplicates.

    What you have here is a set of tables. each of which represents and entity type, e.g. products or colors, but some of those entity types are relationship types between other entity type, e.g. ProductColors.  The tables are normalized, which is the formal process for eliminating redundancy by 'decomposing' a table which includes redundancy in to two or more related tables.  Redundancy is when the same 'fact' is stated more than once in a table, in separate rows, or in rows in different tables.  This allows for inconsistent data to be entered and puts the integrity of the database at risk.

    It's important to understand that the entity type and relationship types in a database have an existence in the real world, because a relational database is a model of the underlying reality.  Designing a relational database is essentially the identification of these real world entity types and relationship types and representing them as related tables.  If the database accurately models the reality it will behave in the same way as the reality being modelled, which is of course exactly what we want it to do.  So, the importance of getting the model right cannot be overstressed.  Once you've done that the interface in terms of the forms and subforms required will by and large be self evident.

    Although it has nothing to do with your specific requirement you might find it helpful to take a look at the file ParentActivities.zip in my SkyDrive folder to which I posted a link earlier.  This illustrates a basic many-to-many relationship type, between parents and activities (it was originally produced for a user wanting this) and how that relationship type is modelled by tables, and how this is represented in a form/subform.  These are the basic building blocks you'll need to use in develop[ping your own application.

    Was this answer helpful?

    1 person found this answer helpful.
    0 comments No comments
  2. Anonymous
    2013-04-05T18:27:49+00:00

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  3. Anonymous
    2013-04-05T18:41:53+00:00

    Thats for the suggestion, but that is way more advanced than I want to take it.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  4. Anonymous
    2013-04-05T19:43:26+00:00

    Starting my new database. I have a suppliers table. Under the Products table would the SupplierID be a foreign key?

    Products Table:

    ProductID(FK)

    ProductName

    SupplierID(FK)

    Where should my Logo and EventID fields go? in the products table or inventory table? I have a logo field because we have two different logos we use and I want to be able to know which has what on it. I created a seperate event table. Am I suppose to do that?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments
  5. ScottGem 68,840 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2013-04-05T20:00:00+00:00

    Yes Supplier is an attribute of Product so its should be a FK in the Products table. Same thing with Logo. However, Event is an attribute of when the product is used. It would also be a many to many relationship. An event can have many products and products can be used at many Events. So you would need a junction table to manage that relationship.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments No comments