Re: Question about modeling

Hi David,

First, i'd like to thank you for your help. It is _really_ appreciated.

I read your post... twice and it seem to me that you got it right. You defined the problem well.

I have implemented a solution (That, I must admit, do not look nice to me). Here is what I actualy have:

CLIENTS (CLIENTS_ID*, ...)
DEPARTMENTS (DEPARTMENTS_ID, CLIENT_ID (FK), ...) CONTRACTS (CONTRACTS_ID, CLIENT_ID (FK), ...) Then I have this table doing a link between DEPARTEMENTS AND CONTRACT

CONTRACTS_DEPARTEMENTS(CONTRACTS_ID*, DEPARTEMENTS_ID*, CLIENT_ID (FK of both DEPARTMENTS and CONTRACTS))

So ! Now I have the contracts attached to the client and I also use this FK in the relation with the DEPARTEMENTS table. So I can not have a contract shared among departments of different clients. What I do not like in this solution is that I duplicated the fact that a contract belong to wich client. There is now two way to look it out : 1) Look at the CLIENT_ID attribute of CONTRACTS, 2) Follow a link from a contact, to a departments, to a client. But, maybe it is the thing to do and I should not worry at all.

In any case, I would like to know what is your solution.

Again, thanks for your help and I hope I am clear, english is not my primary language and I fear I'm a better english reader than writer.

Mathieu Pagé
informatique_at_csf_REMOVE_inc.com Received on Thu Feb 03 2005 - 14:09:46 CST