Re: newbie: using id's or total desciption

"Mirko Koenig" <koenig_at_v-i-t.de> wrote in message news:b8928o$91s$1_at_news.tu-darmstadt.de...
> Hi
>
> (english is not my mother tongue)
>
> I'm planing a database for sales managment in a little shop.
> I have a table for all articles and one for all customers.
> Than one for all invoices and one for all sold articles.
>
> The one with the invoices hold every data of a invoice without the
> artciles of the invoice. These articles are saved in the table
> sold_articles with the invoice id.
>
> My question is:
>
> If i save an invoice, should i save only the id of the customer the
> invoice goes to or should i save the customers name and address instead
> of the id?
> My thought is that anyone could change the customers data completly and
> if one looks at the invoices later it points to the customer but the data
> is totally different. But if i save the customers address and name, you
> can the for whom the invoice was really.
>
> I have the same problem with the sold_articles. Should i just save the
> articles id or all the data like article number, description, supplier
> etc. in the sold_artciles table.
>
> Same tought as above. If anyone changes all the articles data, then the
> bill is not coorect anymore.
>
> thanx for tips.
>
> Mirko Koenig

If your organization has some legal requirement to be able to exactly reproduce invoices as they originally appeared, I suggest you add some form of audit trail which will capture the name of the customer at the time the invoice is created or printed.

In the end, though, your business requirements will determine how to proceed. Nobody on usenet can tell you what those requirements will be. You have to ask your business instead. Received on Thu Apr 24 2003 - 19:07:18 CEST