Ordering info in reports - pls help!

[d.silverman]

Hi, I posted about this a few days ago but no replies, please anyone help if they can!

I have columns named 'response 1', 'response code 1' (giving an accompanying code to categorise the former), 'response 2' and 'response code 2'.

I want to create a report that shows all the responses of code a, say, whether they fall under column 'response 1' *or* 'response 2', then code b, code c, etc, in that order. It can disregard whether each response is under column 'response 1' or 'response 2'.

I know I could do this by putting all the responses into a single column but I would prefer not to do it this way.

Help would be gratefully appreciated.

 

[Joe4]

It is going to be messy (very messy if you really have more than just two questions) because your database is not normalized.

I know it may sometimes seems like a hassle to follow the rules of normalization in setting up your database, but there are good reasons to follow them. If you don't follow them, you will run into problems like this where the solutions are much more complicated than they have to be because of poor database design.

Seriously consider changing your database design to a normalized form, where you would just have two fields, i.e.

Response Number
Response Code

 

[d.silverman]

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. It is divided into three responses sadly, I think I'll do it the stupid way and just paste the lot into one column in a new table and disregard the response number for the purpose of the report. I'll take note of your advice for the next database =)