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kheatley's avatar
kheatley
Qrew Member
23 days ago
Solved

Need help deciding between two db setups

I am pretty new to qb and am currently trying to create an app to help my department track a student's requested thesis committee.  The (hopeful) process:  student will submit form with their identifying info, proposed thesis title, then choose their requested thesis supervisor, and selected reader, both fields pull from the same list of faculty (though if someone is chosen in one field they will not appear in list in 2nd field - that's for another time to figure out). 

So in trying to build something I came up with two different setups and am wondering which people think would be best.  Which do you think will be better longterm.  

Attached are screenshots of both relationship diagrams.  Hopefully they are decipherable.

  • Between your two options; you would need option 2 because you need to assign multiple faculty members to a Thesis for reading.

    There's also a  (better) 3rd option.  Assigning child-records of Faculty to a Thesis will provide better reporting in the long term; particularly if your Thesis Faculty need to have fields they fill in regarding the Thesis (yes they've read it, yes they have comments or feedback, yes it needs review etc.).  When you have multiple-persons who are responsible for entering data relating to a single-entry; storing all of that in a single record gets hard to report in a standard table-style report.  Leveraging the power of the Quickbase relationship with summary fields and lookups; you can do reporting from both the Thesis, Thesis Faculty and Faculty tables!  I recommend this one.

     

     

8 Replies

  • Between your two options; you would need option 2 because you need to assign multiple faculty members to a Thesis for reading.

    There's also a  (better) 3rd option.  Assigning child-records of Faculty to a Thesis will provide better reporting in the long term; particularly if your Thesis Faculty need to have fields they fill in regarding the Thesis (yes they've read it, yes they have comments or feedback, yes it needs review etc.).  When you have multiple-persons who are responsible for entering data relating to a single-entry; storing all of that in a single record gets hard to report in a standard table-style report.  Leveraging the power of the Quickbase relationship with summary fields and lookups; you can do reporting from both the Thesis, Thesis Faculty and Faculty tables!  I recommend this one.

     

     

    • kheatley's avatar
      kheatley
      Qrew Member

      Laura

      I am trying to implement your option but am having issues creating a form where students can select multiple faculty to multiple thesis committee roles.  The form only allows for one related faculty so then only one role.

      • DonLarson's avatar
        DonLarson
        Qrew Elite

        Kim, 

        To add multiple roles with a full relationship to the Thesis Faculty you need a child table under that table.

         

         

        It can also be done with a Multiple Choice Text box.   That is faster to implement, but makes lots of things harder when it it comes to advanced reporting.