[Ian Griffiths]

Hi,

I'm developing a system to track student progress. The database that underlies the system basically has to tie in criteria to evidence. Thats a fairly simple thing to do on the surface of it except for the many forms that evidence may come in, and here lies my problem.

Evidence may be as simple as a one line remark (although it'd be nice here to track time/date/author - which is itself potentially another table). Evidence may also be as complicated as an image, movie, zip file, work doc, text, rtf, many types.

I'm really after throwing ideas around on how best to accommodate whatever evidence my students can throw at it.

Its NVQ btw, so don't say 'have them do everything multiple choice questions'

[sbaru]

Not sure if I understand the situation correct, but if the issue is about tying a file to the record, I would store the file in the file system and store the path in one of the columns in the table. And let the front end handle the task of pulling the actual file for a database record. This way, it does not matter what the format of the file is and there isn't any at all. Let me know if your issue is different.