Re: Designing a structure for a personal database

"David Cressey" <cressey73@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:

>
>"David Segall" <david@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>news:5gno14tv1ki40qfeoko806joq81c7atdti@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>...
>> I apologise for the grumpy tone. I am frustrated that I can't come up
>> with a simple model for what seems like a simple application but I am
>> certainly not blaming anyone else.
>
>What makes you think that a simpler model is going to give you better
>results than the model you already have? 
My current address book would not pass any test for a relational
database. It consists of records that are tied to a particular street
address and they may contain information about several people. This
results in a mobile or work phone number field that contains more than
one phone number and some text to distinguish them. There are multiple
records for friends who have more than one address. It is not a model,
it's a shambles. 

The address books in applications like Outlook Express, Thunderbird
and a few PIMs I have looked at insist that all the information
accompanies every entry. The street address of a couple must be
entered for each of them and both must be changed when they move. None
of them cater for my sister who has a house in Australia, France and
the United States although she has only one email address. I am
willing to ignore the problem posed by my niece who's mobile phone
number changes when she leaves her home country!
>
>I can't speak for others, but it's been ages since I thought about how
PIM
>data ought to be organized,  and I doubt that I would improve on your
>current best solution with just a quick study.
I can't help feeling that anybody's quick study would provide a better
model than either of those I have described above and could easily be
better than anything that I have thought of so far.