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[Beginner] Advantages (and understanding!) of linked databases

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  • g_F
  • New Participant
  • 4 replies

Hi!
When searching, I can only find examples (videos in particular) of how to create links between different tables. But never about the interest (or the best use) of such a practice.
For example, someone was showing a database for an apartment search.
There was a table “Apartments”, and a table “Districts”. And the District table was linked with the Apartments table.
But why not just create a “District” field in the “Apartments” table? Then all the necessary information would be in one place!
I guess this is a basic and naive question, but I don’t understand.
I’m starting to create some databases for myself and I’d like to know if I should separate the data between different tables or not!

+ I noticed that you can’t do everything on the very first column (= hide or delete), so should I leave it empty (or just with numbers for example)?
Thanks in advance for the tips!

2 replies

ScottWorld
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  • ScottWorld
  • Brainy
  • 8741 replies
  • February 1, 2022

Welcome to the community, @g_F !

You need another table when you want to store more information about that particular thing.

For example, if you just want to keep track of a district for each apartment, that could all be in one table.

But what if you needed more information about each district — for example, who is in charge of that district, what year the district was formed, what the boundaries of that district are, what is the phone number to call for each district, etc.?

Then you would want to keep all of that information in a separate district table, so you don’t have to keep typing up all of that extra district information for each apartment.

I discuss this in more detail in my free Airtable training course here:

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  • g_F
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • 4 replies
  • February 1, 2022
ScottWorld wrote:

Welcome to the community, @g_F !

You need another table when you want to store more information about that particular thing.

For example, if you just want to keep track of a district for each apartment, that could all be in one table.

But what if you needed more information about each district — for example, who is in charge of that district, what year the district was formed, what the boundaries of that district are, what is the phone number to call for each district, etc.?

Then you would want to keep all of that information in a separate district table, so you don’t have to keep typing up all of that extra district information for each apartment.

I discuss this in more detail in my free Airtable training course here:


Thank you @ScottWorld ! I tried with very simple examples to link, and I am indeed beginning to see what it can be used for.
Certainly very powerful, I need to think about whether I have use for it in some cases.
Thanks again, and I’ll take a look at that training course link!

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