Before I begin, please I don't want to read the comments "forget it. buy a program" advise because I want to learn.

I want to create a program for a private school which teaches programs : freshamn, certificate and diploma courses. I seem to have a good database so far but I am stuck at some point.

1st: Money matters. A student can chose to pay full fee for the program (E.G. IT-Certificate) or pay in installments. The school have a rather strange rule about that...say for a semester, the student needs to pay 3000. He can pay the 3000 in any amount he likes until the semester ends (10 today, 1400 next week etc). This are just tuition fees. Now, if he has paid fully, any changes in fees by the college mustn't affect him. How would you guys store that information? A separate table to store full paid students or ?

2nd: Graduated Students: How would you handle students who graduated/finished their studies? Should the front-end program (vb.net 2010) do check ups or a separate table should store the students?

I will share my database with you after I get some idea on how to handle this 2 cases.

What is it that you are trying to learn? You are doing a fair bit of work, so you must have some specific goals. Understanding what you want to learn would help me give you better advice on how to learn it.

-PatP

Ok. I want to learn database design in the way professionals so. I have done 5 databases so far but college/student related is really a tough one. There are already done products outthere but if they can do it, why can i (and my mates) do it? I know reinventing the wheel ...but I just don't like the idea of buying other products just because I CAN'T DO IT.

4 simple steps to learning:

1. is to read up on the subject matter - there's some good resources here.
2. is to design your database using the things you learnt in step 1).
3. discuss any issues with your design from step 2) on this forum.
4. is to hand in your homework and be proud that it's your own work