Re: History tracking in databases

You are basically trying to solve a bill-of-materials problem. You may want to look at how some of the commercial MRP/ERP systems have handled this. Some other responses have suggested active/inactive flags, or start/end dates for "box1". This will only work if you have a single "version" of box1 which can be active at a given time. If your business requirement includes having multiple versions of box1 active at a given time (i.e. for different assemblies/"crates"), then you'll either need to version each assembly, or apply active/inactive flags to the link/relation between an assembly and its components. This is a very tricky problem - have fun. Matt bhq001@email.mot.com wrote: > > I am trying to develop a relational database for a project at work. > Currently we are at the logical design phase for this database. > The database structure is very hierarchical due to the data > requirements of the project. p.s. If you look a bit further you'll see that the problem is only a hierarchy if you view it from the perspective of a single assembly/crate.