"Bob Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Quorting someone else who's name is no longer present:
> >Is there any way to make one field in a table calculate another field.
> >I'm making a DB that calculates commissions. So in the money_made
> >field would have the # of sales (sales field) times whatever the
> >commission would be.
>
> Yes sir, but don't do it. That's the classic example of something
> that should not be in a table. Calculated fields belong in queries.
In a lot of cases that's true to prevent storing of redundant data.
However, the poster's example was about sales and commissions. In the real
world commission rates within a company can change over time so if the
poster is trying to calculate the commission in conjunction with an INSERT
STATEMENT it might be wise to have the commission rate in a variable in the
associatd application and add the commission as the record is entered. Then
when the commission rate goes down (or up), a variable can be modified and
the application will work fine. If the commission rate is already in the
table (the poster didn't state this, but it could be) then it might make
sense to calculate the commission instead of saving it in a field. Then
again, if the number of rows is large and reports are going to be generated
based on things like total commissions by sales person by month, it might
create more overhead than desired.
--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/
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