School Management- tables or views?

[Hashim_Warren]

I need to create an airtable for my vocational school. We teach and we place students into jobs.

I could create one mega table with lots of views. Or seperate tables for each:

Students
Sessions
Student Reviews
Employers
Prospects and Leads
Partners

Is there a methodology for deciding between making a view versus making a table and connecring data? What should i consider?

[Nathan_Cain]

Each “thing” should have it’s own table. The Students table should link to a Student Reviews table, etc.

[Hashim_Warren]

Thanks @Nathan_Cain.

How is that better than the student recoew being part of the student table, and just hidden or revealed using a VIEW?

[Daniel_Saunders]

It depends on what a Student review is. Will a student be reviewed multiple times, and you want to keep the data from each review (in tech talk, is there a 1 to many relationship between students and reviews)? If so, you’d want to make Student Review a table.

[Nathan_Cain]

Also, if you want to use Airtable’s built in forms then you will want to keep separate tables. The form would allow you to choose the student from a dropdown and then type in the review information. The form would belong to the Reviews table.

[Hashim_Warren]

The student review is the student’s review of the school. So there’s a one-to-one relationship there.

[Nathan_Cain]

So, if you would like to present one of Airtable’s forms to the student then it will need to be a separate table. However, if you are going to have someone type in their review for the student or are going to make use of the api to design your own forms AND there will only be one review per student then you are good to go with one table.