I am setting up a db with customer information. I have in the customer table FirstName, MI and LastName. Some of my customers will be companies with only one name.

I could set up a field called CompanyName and enter company name in it but I will have to deal with two names in my reports. I am not sure of the best way to resolve this.

Can someone suggest a way to design my db to take this into consideration

Thanks

In consideration; ask your self how valuable will it be that you have as much information as possible about your customer. Capturing this information depends on how you do business, is it more for the individual within a company or with a company and you deal with one individual. In either case capture both in the event either changes you have both to correspond to. As far as your report; be more specific as to where you think your problems may be. A report can be as complex as you want it to be. In other words present only what you do or do want to present. I hope this information helps.

Jemacc is correct in asking you to evaluate what's important to you; but in general, if you're doing business, I strongly recommend that you have both person and company in your table. If the person you're dealing with is representing him/herself, you can always leave the company field empty. However, if you're dealing with a company, you always want to know the name of the contact person. You would never leave that person's name out and just put a company name. You're asking for trouble if you do. Always have a contact name and phone number or e-mail address.


Greg Serrano
Michigan Dept. of Environmental Quality, Air Quality Division

I have a contact database but the information is broken down respectively such as:

tblCompany
CoID
CoName
CoStreetAddress
CoCity
CoState
CoZip
CoPhone
CoFax
CoURL

tblPeople
PeopleID
FirstName
MI
LastName
Email
CellPhone
WorkPhone

Then you have a join table called tblPeopleCompany where you state what people are related to what company and the effective date:

tblPeopleCompany
CoID
PeopleID
EffectiveDate

HTH,

Beth M