>Hi Steve:
>
>>Do these "finishing options" fields all have the same dataType? Can you provide a little more detail on what is in these fields? I'm wondering if there could be a related child-table that could hold this information...
>
>Nope, they are not the same data type. There a char, varchar, tinyint, smallint, int, datetime and bit columns. Each piece of data represents finishing information. The finishing table record is 1-1 with each job record. Like I said, the data in this table is totally normalized. I can't see any sub-groups of data within the finishing record that could be broken out into child data/table(s).

Gary,

Well, them being different data types throws my idea a bit. I wasn't talking about grouping the data, but having a child table with one entry for every finishing attribute. So if there were five finishing fields being used (in your current design) for a certain job, the child table (finishing options) would have five records, with a field (finishingID) identifying which finishing option is being used, and another field containing the data itself. The finishingID could be a code, that looks into another table to see which finishing option it relates to, or it could just be string.

You see what I'm saying?

BTW, what kind of jobs are these (if you don't mind sharing)?