Setting up my first database

[kushner.sound]

Hello. I’m a complete newbie to creating databases and I’m trying to create one in Base to help keep track of material for my landscape installation business. I’m looking for basic advice on setting up my database. I’m hoping to input plant material needed for each upcoming project and then be able to print out lists of plant material needed for various combinations of projects. My question is, do I create a different table for each client, or make client a field in the database? Any help on the structure of this simple database would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

[Ratslinger]

Hello,

Learning Base & databases is a large undertaking. This requires learning multiple things such a databases & the components, SQL to talk to the database & in this case Base which is the front end to the database.

The best starting point is the documentation found here → LO Documentation. For Base there is the Getting Started guide, the complete Base section, samples and How-Tos. The documentation has many walk through examples on how to do things.

A brief answer to the actual question. The clients would all reside in one table with each client in a record within the table. The “material” would reside in its’ own table containing all materials for all the clients. The records in the client table are ‘related’ to the material records. This means each client record may connect to many material records. This is the basis of relational databases and is known as a one-to-many relationship. This is a very simple example & the documentation will explain better with examples.

If this answers your question please tick the (upper left area of answer). It helps others to know there was an accepted answer.