Re: vehicle to autoparts relationships

"javelin" <google.1.jvmail_at_spamgourmet.com> wrote in message news:1164221611.287287.270280_at_b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I posted an answer to someone's question, and realized I have more
> questions than answers. Thus, I am going to post my scenario to get to
> the question that I have:
>
> I have a challenge, to figure out what part of the vehicle to relate
> parts to. I can't relate a part to the entire vehicle. Why? Well, a
> vehicle can have, apparently, more than one engine configuration. For
> example, I have a Honda Civic with a 1.5L engine, and it can come with
> a 1.6L engine as well. Now, I don't know that much about auto
> mechanics, but my understanding is that you can have some similar parts
> for those two engines, and some different parts. Thus, I believe I need
> to relate the parts to the engine configuration. However, that's only
> for engine parts. There are also transmission parts. The car can come
> in manual or automatic, so now you have different parts that relate to
> the transmission on this particular vehicle. Going further (and getting
> funner), your wheel base affects the parts you have, and then there's
> the body style. Thus, you need to relate the part to the particular
> application, not just the vehicle.
>
> All this to ask if my thinking is correct: is it best to create an Xref
> table between each autopart category (engine, transmission, exhaust,
> body, etc) and the parts table, or one large xref table between the
> two, with the addition of a category field. The one large xref table
> would have it's foreign key related to each of the tables that govern
> their group (e.g.: tbl_engine.engine_id,
> tbl_transmission.transmission_id, etc)
>
> Thanks in advance for the advice.
>

Parts can have parts. Read up on "parts explosion". Received on Wed Nov 22 2006 - 21:26:10 CET