Posted by cover on 12/09/05 18:44

I have two distinctively different pieces of equipment that I'm trying
to build a database for, each having 20 inputs which makes my mysql
table 40 fields wide.

Form one is for 'shakers' and form two is for 'conveyors'. About the
only thing they will have in common is that they both share
'motorsize' and they both share 'bearing' although shakers have two
where conveyors have four.

I'd first built a table within a database called 'equipment' just for
shakers and and planned on doing another one called 'conveyors' to
capture contents from the conveyor form.

The reason I'd thought about placing inputs from both forms into a
single table was for better queryability from a single query form
where I'd be sure to capture even common elements such as where all I
use a particular 'bearing' without having to query each table
separately.

I noticed immediately that inputting data from my 'shakers' form was
not successful after I'd set the table up with 40 fields to capture
activity from both forms which maybe I could correct by adding <input
type="hidden" name="whatever" value="0"> as appropriate to fill up the
additional 20 fields for each respective form but that might be an odd
way to do it, not to mention what the database size might look like
down the road.

So, should I run input data from two twenty input forms into a table
of 40 fields or will the size grow so quickly that I am fast to regret
it.

thanks for any advice,

Chris

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