Data Import - Importing Related Tables

TeleMagic has totally revamped the import feature in version 4. The import wizard leads you effortlessly through choosing the proper options to bring your existing data into TeleMagic. Since there are so many possibilities, let's take a look at one of these options and explain it in a little more detail: importing related tables.

What is a related-tables import?

Let's say that you have 2 flat-file (single-level) databases that you would like to consolidate into a relational database. One database has your customers and one database has your orders. You would like to have them both in a single database where your customers are on level 1 and you can link their orders to them on level 2. This link is known as a Parent-to-Child or One-to-Many relationship. Relationships are one of the most powerful features of TeleMagic. Creating and maintaining these relationships is one of the purposes of the related-tables import. The only real prerequisite is that your databases have to have a field in common that you can link the records by, for example, the customer's name and address.

How do you relate tables?

Relating tables is simply finding some common information in your 2 databases by which you can link records. You want to use something more than just the customer's name because you could possibly have more than one customer with that name. This could easily result in the miss linking of orders to customers. To further qualify the customers, choose the address or maybe the phone number in addition to ensure that this is not a problem. The combination of both the company name and the address will, most of the time, result in a unique company. These fields have to have the same data in them and have to match in format exactly. This means the import routine will not link records where the company name in one file is "ABC, Inc." and the other file contains "abc, inc." This may require an advanced expression in the assignment of these fields to accommodate for case sensitivity. If you need help creating this expression, please contact Technical Support. Remember that field assignments and identifying parent records are totally separate. You do not necessarily need to assign the fields that are used to identify parent and child records.

After you have chosen your identifying fields, you are ready to continue the import wizard. Once you have completed the wizard, you are ready to run the import. It's that easy.

 

-- End of FAQ #551

FAQ ID #551

Product Related: TeleMagic 4.x

Last Updated: March 20, 2000