Store Many Lookup Lists

 

An Efficient Way to Store Many Lookup Lists

Combining Many Lookup Lists Tables Into One Table

One of the things that complicates larger Microsoft Access databases is the number of database objects – tables, queries, forms and reports.

This situation can make maintenance confusing and complicated, especially if you didn’t create the database in the first place. In addition to using my naming conventions (see:Database Naming Conventions) many programmers combine many lookup tables into a single table.

Here is an example of a standard design for such a table:

Note the primary key fields.  Also set the LOV_ID field to Indexed (no duplicates) – this makes it equivalent to a primary key field for linking to other tables.   Also set the LOV_Category field to Indexed (duplicates OK) – this will speed up the queries.  Here’s an example of the data entered into this table:

See the LOV_Category – this field makes it possible to combine multiple lookup lists into this single table.

The query design to create a lookup list for Product Color looks like this:

And the final result looks like this:

Now you may say… hey! you’ve only substituted having many tables to having many queries!… and you would be correct.   To solve this situation consider not saving the Q_LOV_Product_Color as a query in the database.  Save the SQL statement for this query as the Row Source for the Combo Box:

Having all your lookup lists in one table probably won’t increase the speed of your database.   If you have a split database (front end/back end) then you can significantly speed up your forms if you store the main L_LOVs table in the front end.  If the entries in this table change or are added to frequently then consider running a query, when the front end database starts up, that clears out the local (front end) L_LOVs table and inserts the values from the table stored in the back end database.  If you have many lookup lists on your forms then this can dramatically speed up the database once the front end is loaded.

 

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