Re: vehicle to autoparts relationships

From: Phil Stanton <phil_at_stantonfamily.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 23 Nov 2006 16:48:02 -0000
Message-ID: <4565d0be$0$8748$ed2619ec_at_ptn-nntp-reader02.plus.net>


Sounds remarkably similar to a recipe DB that I wrote for a flavour making company where a flavour (Car) was composed of (sub)Flavours(Engine, Transmission) and ingredients(Nuts & bolts) Each SubFlavour (Engine) equally comprised of SubSubFlavours(Fuel Pump) and ingredients (Nuts, bolts, washers). This system could be bested indefinitely. In the end everything was reduced to the basic ingredients. We then had details of all the suppliers and their product details for each ingredient - i.e. Mssrs Smith could supply 1" m6 screws reference 123 at £5.00 /1000 and Mssrs Jones could supply 1" m6 screws reference ABC at £49p /100. You could then have form that showed all the components that used 1" m6 screws.

Any help

Phil

"javelin" <google.1.jvmail_at_spamgourmet.com> wrote in message news:1164221611.287287.270280_at_b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
>I posted an answer to someone's question, and realized I have more
> questions than answers. Thus, I am going to post my scenario to get to
> the question that I have:
>
> I have a challenge, to figure out what part of the vehicle to relate
> parts to. I can't relate a part to the entire vehicle. Why? Well, a
> vehicle can have, apparently, more than one engine configuration. For
> example, I have a Honda Civic with a 1.5L engine, and it can come with
> a 1.6L engine as well. Now, I don't know that much about auto
> mechanics, but my understanding is that you can have some similar parts
> for those two engines, and some different parts. Thus, I believe I need
> to relate the parts to the engine configuration. However, that's only
> for engine parts. There are also transmission parts. The car can come
> in manual or automatic, so now you have different parts that relate to
> the transmission on this particular vehicle. Going further (and getting
> funner), your wheel base affects the parts you have, and then there's
> the body style. Thus, you need to relate the part to the particular
> application, not just the vehicle.
>
> All this to ask if my thinking is correct: is it best to create an Xref
> table between each autopart category (engine, transmission, exhaust,
> body, etc) and the parts table, or one large xref table between the
> two, with the addition of a category field. The one large xref table
> would have it's foreign key related to each of the tables that govern
> their group (e.g.: tbl_engine.engine_id,
> tbl_transmission.transmission_id, etc)
>
> Thanks in advance for the advice.
>
Received on Thu Nov 23 2006 - 17:48:02 CET

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