Hey Gang-

I'm curious. I'm working on a student database. I need to add a field that tells how the child and parent (or guardian) is related. As you know, the modern family is difficult. Kids live with aunts, grandparents, etc. So I'm just curious how I'd include that data in my db.

I currently have a "Parent" and Student table. So the parents, or responsible party could be linked to multiple kids.

Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!!

G

I'd model people as one entity (table), relationships as another entity, and relationship types as a third entity. The relationsip entity would link two people (one weak like a chile, the other strong like a mother in the modeling sense) and describe their relationship type.

If you need to support multiple langages (English, Spanish, French, etc) you'll want to use Unicode and will need to support some kind of equivalence grouping within the relationship types so your code can easily tell that child, niño, and enfant were equivalent relationship types.

-PatP

Okay... so children and parents/guardians would be in the same table? Currently I have address info in the "Parent" table, so would that need broken out into another table?

This is the basic model I'm following... which could be totally wrong.. but I'm kinda new at this. http://www.databaseanswers.org/data_...ters/index.htm

That model only covers relationships one-generation deep.
Child/Caregiver, though caregiver might have one or more "titles".
If that's all you need, then that model will do. I would just rename the Parents table to "Guardians" or "Caregivers" and add a column to define their role in the child's life.