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Re: need table help

for

From: KNOCK Alistair
Date: Jan 19, 2005 7:22AM

Axes. Given that each employee always has two employers, is there
anything wrong with:

Employee Name | Employee Status | Employer 1 Name | Employer 1 Status |
Employer 2 Name | Employer 2 Status
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------

(that's 6 columns, in case it wraps)

That would be the most usable solution, given that you want person to be
unique. I know that's not visibly what you were after, though to me
your original sketch didn't make sense semantically unless you gave each
record its own table and repeated the headers - there's no intrinsic
association between employee and employers otherwise, that is if you
want work out which is which.

If you don't mind duplicate employee rows, then you could just have:

Employee Name | Employee Status | Employer Name | Employer Status
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Employee A | Happy, thanks. | Employer 1 | Stressed
Employee A | Happy, thanks. | Employer 2 | Chilled

But you then end up duplicating employee name and status and there's a
whole lot more to read through. I'd opt for the first layout in a
non-web situation, so presumably would opt for the same in a web
situation. That makes it easier to mark up sensibly too, I think?

Incidentally, what kind of weird corporate structure is this? :)

Alistair

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