Question

I have another SQL/access 2007 question that seems really basic but I’m not sure how to Google for it.

I have this table STUDENT-TERMS with the following fields:

StudentTermID

StudentID (links to STUDENT table)

TermID (links to TERMS table)

TermGPA (this is the nugget of info that needs to be recorded)

STUDENT table looks like this:

StudentID

Name

TERMS table looks like this:

TermID

Start date

End date

I have a document with all of the info that gets uploaded into the Access doc. This document that I get has the same student and term IDs as exist in the database.

Then I can run an append query to get the data into the STUDENT-TERMS table. Which is fine.

How do I write the query such that there is only one record of each term for each student?
So for example I have this data in the table right now:

StudentTerm ID: 5

StudentID: Tara

TermID: 1011Autumn

TermGPA: 3.8

When I upload and append a new document, it might still contain that information about Tara and I want the db to say “Hey, we already have that, skip it” as it does the appending. How do I indicate that?

HERE IS THE CONCLUSION/ANSWER/RESOLUTION:
Thanks for your help everyone. This is what I wound up doing:

1. I made a new field in the table called StudentTerm which contains a concatenation of the StudentID and the Term (like so: Tara1011Autumn). This field is indexed with no duplicates.

2. The query that performs the appending looks like this:

INSERT INTO StudentTerms ( StudentID, TermID, GPA, StudentTerm )
SELECT
Upload_Students.StudentID, Upload_Students.TermID, Upload_Students.GPA,
[Upload_Students]![StudentID] & [Upload_Students]![TermID] AS Expr1
FROM Students INNER JOIN Upload_Students ON Students.StudentID = Upload_Students.StudentID;

This query attempts to fill the StudentTerm field with Tara1011Autumn. If that string already exists in the table, it won’t append the record.

Answer 1

Create a unique index on the [student-terms] table, with the StudentID and StudentTermID fields in the index.

Then, when you run the append query Access will tell you “# records couldn’t be added due to key violations”, before asking you if you want to continue. If you hit Yes in that dialog box, then all the non-violating records will be appended, and the offending records will be saved into a different table.

There are other options available in the DoCmd.RunQuery action if you’re doing this from VBA to automate this.