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Price changes over time...

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    Price changes over time...

    Hello,

    What are the ways to deal with price and fee changes over time, e.g. the rate for a newspaper advertisement last year is different now, but suppose I want to run a monthly report on ads from last year. How do I (elegantly) keep last year's rates relevant to last year's data, and this year's rates for the present?

    In this industry, rates are often fixed for a certain time period, and have a range of discounts based on frequency, and surcharges based on e.g. color or special position. Can I make the database select rates based on e.g. a date field and say, a frequency field?

    Thanks,

    Sean ;-)

    #2
    RE: Price changes over time...

    Sean,

    As a general rule I think it best to store the data describing a single transaction in a single record. I would not want to have 'reconstruct' the details of a single transaction by having to open multiple tables and extract historic information that might have been accurate on the transactio date, but which has subsequently changed.

    Perhaps a useful model would be something like this:

    1) Customer table - store all information needed to describe and communicate with the customer here.

    2) Transaction table - store all information about the purchase of a single ad here. Include a key field (link field) which will hold the customer id, so that you can link customers to transactions.

    3) An 'Ad Pricing' table - store current information here about the type and pricing of various ads. In other contexts this might be an inventory or products table. Use it as the 'lookup' table from which the user will choose values to be inserted into the Transaction table.

    If this all feels foreign to you, perhaps you should invest a few hours with a local database designer and develop an overall plan for your new system.

    -- tom

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Price changes over time...

      Hello Tom,

      Thanks for the reply - makes good sense. If you want to stop by after work for coffee and a chat, I'm in a small coastal town in South Africa (photo attached). ;)

      Sorry to ask all these questions, but I haven't been able to find as many explanations as I had hoped in the documentation. I haven't programmed for some years since University, where I took Computer Science, but nothing practical or in-depth on databases, just some database theory.

      I used to code Pascal, C++, do object-oriented stuff, machine language, etc., but haven't for a while now. I need to fast-track this database project and get back to my other responsibilities in the advertising, marketing, website and design world. Was hoping to complete the project in 2 weeks or less, but understanding 'why' and 'how' the features of Alpha 5 work is taking longer than I expected.

      Thanks for your patience.

      Sean ;-)

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Price changes over time...

        No apology is needed.

        I recommend you spend time with the database templates you'll find in the Samples folder. Play with them. Then take them apart in design mode, to see how they tick.

        -- tom

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