Hello,
I am a beginner when it comes to database design. I learned Microsoft Access when I was in junior high, more than a decade ago. I have since tried to teach myself other things and while I understand many of the concepts, I find that actually putting them to use with the database I am trying to design is proving difficult. I am not looking to design a database to be distributed anywhere. It's for my own personal records. I am an avid Sims player. To that affect, I keep copious records of my Sims and my various games. Yes, I am a terrible geek XD Keeping the information in a spreadsheet is becoming very cumbersome. I thought having a database would make much more sense. Unfortunately, I tend to go- big with things. I am not sure if the design I want is even possible. I've been playing around with it for a couple weeks now and all it's doing is driving me a little batty. Which is why I've come here, hoping for some advice.
What I want, essentially is for each Sim to have a record that contains this:
Sim Name: First name, last name, married name (if applicable)
Life Stage: List of stages Age: Days to age up (a number) Status: List of options Career: List, as well as whether they've maxed career
Traits: Childhood, teen, young adult, bonus, reward, earned
Death: List, if applicable Household: Name, town, lot, build
Skills: List of skills, as well as whether they have maxed a skill or not
Aspirations: List of aspirations, as well as whether they have maxed any. Also, completed aspirations give traits. I'd like the completed aspiration to automatically give the corresponding trait in the traits field
Parties: List of parties, as well as what medals are earned
Relationships: Friends, good friends, BFF's, Spouse/partner, Mother/Father, Siblings, Children (ultimately, would love to be able to insert a family tree, but not needed)
Game: List of which games/challenges I'm playing, with added info for each game Type: List of options Uploaded to Gallery: Yes/No Saved to Library: Yes/No
Short Bio: Text box of brief info
This is the essential information I'd like. The issue I'm running into is how to organize the tables, and once organized, what relationships there are, if any. I've looked at it from a couple different avenues. I thought to go simple at one point, have a Sims Entity, comprising name, life stage, age, and status as columns. Then Accomplishments would be the next Entity using Skills, Aspirations, Parties, and Career as the columns. Relationships, Address, and Game would be the other Entities. But that doesn't seem to be quite what I needed either. Or if it is, I'm just having a hard time understanding how it works.
Then I tried using tables using all the bolded titles up above as the entities, but then it seemed far too complicated. I find I'm having issues with some of the terms used so I'm unable to use the concepts I can understand for other databases and applying them to this one. I would be very appreciative for any opinions on how best to set this up. Thanks for the time and sorry for the wall of text.
I am a beginner when it comes to database design. I learned Microsoft Access when I was in junior high, more than a decade ago. I have since tried to teach myself other things and while I understand many of the concepts, I find that actually putting them to use with the database I am trying to design is proving difficult. I am not looking to design a database to be distributed anywhere. It's for my own personal records. I am an avid Sims player. To that affect, I keep copious records of my Sims and my various games. Yes, I am a terrible geek XD Keeping the information in a spreadsheet is becoming very cumbersome. I thought having a database would make much more sense. Unfortunately, I tend to go- big with things. I am not sure if the design I want is even possible. I've been playing around with it for a couple weeks now and all it's doing is driving me a little batty. Which is why I've come here, hoping for some advice.
What I want, essentially is for each Sim to have a record that contains this:
Sim Name: First name, last name, married name (if applicable)
Life Stage: List of stages Age: Days to age up (a number) Status: List of options Career: List, as well as whether they've maxed career
Traits: Childhood, teen, young adult, bonus, reward, earned
Death: List, if applicable Household: Name, town, lot, build
Skills: List of skills, as well as whether they have maxed a skill or not
Aspirations: List of aspirations, as well as whether they have maxed any. Also, completed aspirations give traits. I'd like the completed aspiration to automatically give the corresponding trait in the traits field
Parties: List of parties, as well as what medals are earned
Relationships: Friends, good friends, BFF's, Spouse/partner, Mother/Father, Siblings, Children (ultimately, would love to be able to insert a family tree, but not needed)
Game: List of which games/challenges I'm playing, with added info for each game Type: List of options Uploaded to Gallery: Yes/No Saved to Library: Yes/No
Short Bio: Text box of brief info
This is the essential information I'd like. The issue I'm running into is how to organize the tables, and once organized, what relationships there are, if any. I've looked at it from a couple different avenues. I thought to go simple at one point, have a Sims Entity, comprising name, life stage, age, and status as columns. Then Accomplishments would be the next Entity using Skills, Aspirations, Parties, and Career as the columns. Relationships, Address, and Game would be the other Entities. But that doesn't seem to be quite what I needed either. Or if it is, I'm just having a hard time understanding how it works.
Then I tried using tables using all the bolded titles up above as the entities, but then it seemed far too complicated. I find I'm having issues with some of the terms used so I'm unable to use the concepts I can understand for other databases and applying them to this one. I would be very appreciative for any opinions on how best to set this up. Thanks for the time and sorry for the wall of text.