hi all,

I am currently working on a database with lots of weird values in it. It was originally a spreadsheet, and I need to make it a database (and its a pretty bad spreadsheet too)

Here is a the UNF representation

UNF (Date, Client, Address, Contact, Helicopter, Pilot, Charter_Type, Cost_Per_Hour, Passengers, Leg, ETA, ETD, Origin, Destination, ATA, ATD, Engine_Time, Total_Engine_Time, Special_Requirements)

The Leg field has a value of 1, 2, 3 etc, but this may be duplicated as there can be multiple Clients. I am thinking of using the Client and the Leg as an initial composite PK.

Basically I work it as following (PKs are in bold)

1NF

CHARTER (Date, Client, Address, Contact, Helicopter_Number, Pilot, Charter_Type, Cost_Per_Hour, Passengers, Leg, ETA, ETD, Origin, Destination, ATA, ATD, Engine_Time, Total_Engine_Time, Special_Requirements)

So to cut it down, I have four relations at the end

Client (Client, Address, Contact)

Leg(Leg, Date, ETA, ETD, Origin, Destination, ATA, ATD, Engine_Time)

Helicopter(Helicopter_Number, Cost_Per_Hour)

Charter (Passengers, Total_Engine_Time, Special_Requirements, Charter_Type, Pilot)

Thing is, I have no PK for the Charter relation, should I just invent one??

If somebody could clear this up, I would appreciated it, and I apologise for being daft! I have read a number of guides on Normalisation, but nearly all assume there is one attribute that is obviously the PK...

Define "charter". Define "leg".

I see nothing in your proposed schema that relates any of the tables to one another, and that is going to be a problem for you.