i am running up against an ability wall and i could desperately use some advice.

i am building a cf app using an access database. this is for an off-line daily menu generator for a nutritionist friend who wants to create menus for his family (good project i figured for me to do as my first real-world app).

so i have the basic tables in the database: person, foodItems, meals. i also have the cf files adding/deleting/modifying from these. now i want the ability to create menus based on person-->day of week-->meal-->food item-->quantity of food item (for calculation of calories, etc that are stored in the foodItems table).

at this point, i am lost. i don't know what new tables i need to create if any...say i have 10 clients over 7 days using up to 6 meals (includes snacks--but meals are optional).

i don't need help with the cf...i have that down. i just don't have a clue how to handle in a simple manner. i know this sounds like a lot to ask for, but i am pretty resourceful...if you have any examples like this, urls for complex db design tutorials or any help would be greatly appreciated.

thanks in advance.

jake

Your first step is to describe exactly what you want to deliver. Draw up a sample menu and all the fields you want.

Next determine the entity relationships in the menu routine. Determine what your entities are and how they are related to each other.

Next determine all the keys involved in creating the relationships.

Next put in all the attributes for each of the entities and think about the entities and relationships again.

I can't teach you to data model, but I can coach you along somewhat.

Come back with a list of entites and their keys and attributes. Put them up

Entity1(Keys, ForeignKeys, Attribute1, Attribute2...)
Entity2....

And we will see what we can do.