Hi J,

The requirements for the project were to be able determine the status
and location of the Folder (the object) at all times and to track a
history of what has happened to this folder in the past.
The users were really only interested in knowing the current status
and location of a folder. The history requirement was something that
they mentioned would be nice but they didn't really care what it
looked. At the time I had never worked with history or log tables and
I had some deadlines to meet so after consulting a co-worker I put
this tbl_EventLog together (he reccommended the "log" being added on).

There are about 15 event types that can happen to a folder and there
are rules of which events can happen when. After an event occurs the
Location and Status change of the folder. Location is based on where
the event ended up, the "ToDepartmentType_EmployeeID" column. The
status depends on the "EventType" of the event that just occurred.

Looking back at what I did I know I missed a number of things.

1) The history/log should be done differently. Some people
reccommended two tables. One to store the active data and one that
logs the history.
2) There are two levels of statuses. Some statuses stay with a folder
and only get changed by certain events while the level statuses will
be changed by different events.

For example, the event "check out" happens to a folder. The
status is "checked out". The event "check in" will change the status
to "checked in." While it is "checked in" the folder can have the
event "purge" happen to it which
gives the folder the status of "checked in" and "purged."
If the folder now has the "check out" event occur it will be "purged"
and "checked out."

I didn't realize this untill the middle of development and it was
already too late to change the design. Looking back I am trying to
think of the best way to design this.

I hope I made it clearer what the tables are used for.

What is the difference b/n a "log" and "history"?

Would you have three separate tables for current data, log, and
history?

Thanks,

Oran