Summarizing within a table

Adam,

The use case is close to what you describe, except that I don't know in advance how many tables (levels) there would be from task to sub-task to sub-sub-task and onward. I can of course limit the number of levels, but the application is for scoping out work for bid and proposal purposes. So the work breakdown structure could vary considerably from project to project in terms of depth (how many levels of sub-tasks), and horizontally (how many tasks at a given level). The key part of the use case is to roll up budgets to each level from whatever sub-task resource costs were assigned to.

So for example, say a project is to design an airplane. Level 1 is the airplane. Level 2 would have sub-tasks for the fuselage, engines, tail assembly, and wings. Level 3 would have sub-tasks for each Level 2 task, so for example, under the tail assembly there might be tasks for elevators, trim tab, rudder, etc. Level 4 sub-tasks for the elevators could include actuators, hinges, the elevator control surface, and other key subsystems. And it continues. At some lower level costs will be estimated and assigned. The challenge is how to roll up those costs to the intermediate levels. For example, the program manager may want to know labor costs for the tail assembly, and if they're high, drill down another level to see if the cost increases are coming from the elevators, trim tab, etc.

I often see projects with as many as five to seven levels, so that would require one table for each level. But if that's the solution then I'll look at that again.

I'll look at cascading lookups which I'm not using right now.

Does this explain the use case better?

Thank you for your time and thoughts on this.
Paul Streit

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Paul Streit
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