Mutiple tables vs single table

I am creating a database (Mac OS X with FMPro 9 Advanced). I will not
be doing any record creation, just data analysis, and will be importing
the data from one (or potentially more) excel files. I have two options:

1) Create the following tables: Customer, Sales, Channel and Region and
create portals and reports for data analysis. This would require
different data elements into the respective table to make the
rlationships (all one to many) work.

2) In contrast, I could import all the data into 1 table and use table
occurrences to create the necessary relationships for the desired
portals and reports, etc.

Could someone please tell me the benefits and drawbacks to both approaches?

Thanks,

Bubba

Re: Mutiple tables vs single table

On Nov 15, 12:29 pm, Bubba wrote:
> I am creating a database (Mac OS X with FMPro 9 Advanced). I will not
> be doing any record creation, just data analysis, and will be importing
> the data from one (or potentially more) excel files. I have two options:
>
> 1) Create the following tables: Customer, Sales, Channel and Region and
> create portals and reports for data analysis. This would require
> different data elements into the respective table to make the
> rlationships (all one to many) work.
>
> 2) In contrast, I could import all the data into 1 table and use table
> occurrences to create the necessary relationships for the desired
> portals and reports, etc.
>
> Could someone please tell me the benefits and drawbacks to both approaches?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Bubba

In #2 you'd have a lot of unused fields and many of your relationships
would need an extra element (a "Type" filter). #1 is the normal,
normalized, way to go.