[AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re:WhyChan geFieldSi ze/wasCha nge FieldS ize

DWUTKA at marlow.com DWUTKA at marlow.com
Tue Dec 6 13:41:11 CST 2005


Yes, I can definitely appreciate that!!!

My very first 'real' ASP project was an Employee Survey for our company.
That was originally done completely on paper, and then manually entered into
a horribly designed database. (I didn't design the .mdb, a DataPoint
developer did.....it was ugly, and didn't even have reports setup for it, it
was just one huge table, where they had to manually count the
results....like I said, ugly).

Anyhow, I developed the database, then wrote a few .dll's to deal with the
business/db logic for the ASP pages.  To 'handle' the recordsets, I was
building arrays to hold the data.  The system worked just fine when I was
done, but every year they wanted something 'new' from the system.  Most of
the time, it was just a custom report, which I would just do in Access
(since the web reports were pretty generic, and for general viewing by the
company, and the reports they wanted were just for Senior Management).
About three years into the use of the system, however, they decided to
completely flip around the way data was displayed. (They wanted to group
cost centers into a couple of 'groups', and only have the data displayed by
the groups, instead of the cost centers).  It required that I rework the asp
pages and their underlying .dlls.  By this time, I was well into class use
inside my .dlls.  So most of my .dll's now would have something like this:

RecordClass (so if I was building a system for Employee information, I would
have an 'Employee' Class, which would contain properties for all of the
fields, and functions to retrieve/save information for a single employee.)

RecordsClass (again, for Employee Information, this would be an 'Employees'
Class, which would contain a collection of individual Employee Classes.
There would be processes to pull up employee information en mass (all,
certain types, various sort orders, etc.).

Then, when using the .dll in ASP, I would create Employee and Employees
classes, and loop through the Employee classes stored within the Employees
class.  Very easy to deal with.

When I had to change the Employee Survey .dll, I tried for a few hours to
reverse engineer my original logic, and just gave up, because each change I
made messed something else up, so I reworked a good chunk of it to use
Classes within collections.  Ugh.....You live and learn! ;)

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: John Colby [mailto:jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 1:20 PM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam]
Re:WhyChan geFieldSi ze/wasCha nge FieldS ize


>I hadn't gotten into Classes at the time, and so my code was awash with
arrays and routines that were far more complex then they really needed to
be.

LOL, me too. 

You will appreciate this.

When writing my first Access framework I did not know about (access)
classes.  So I actually used collections of collections, where one
collection would (for example) hold pointers to controls that I needed to
process (keyed on control names), and the next collection held these
collections, keyed on form names.  As a form loaded, I would look in a
collection to see if that form already had a control collection in the form
collection, if not I would load up a collection with all the relevant
controls for whatever function I was performing.

It worked, but what a mess.

In fact, rev two of my framework was written precisely to get rid of such
jury rigged stuff.  It did use classes and boy was it a huge improvement.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 2:03 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re:WhyChan
geFieldSi ze/wasCha nge FieldS ize

I know.  I am not really part of the 'Access Crowd', because I tend to use
.mdb backends, but not front ends.  So I get my share of ribbing in here,
and don't really mind.  And I certainly know the 'boy was I an idiot'
thoughts.  Especially when I look back at my first VB/ASP projects.  I
hadn't gotten into Classes at the time, and so my code was awash with arrays
and routines that were far more complex then they really needed to be.

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: John Colby [mailto:jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 1:01 PM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re:
WhyChangeFieldSi ze/wasCha nge FieldS ize


And for the record, I was saying that I look back at things I said and did
20 years ago and say "boy was I an idiot".  I suspect that most of us do,
and those that don't are likely the true idiots.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Charlotte Foust
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 1:50 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: [Spam] Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re:
WhyChangeFieldSi ze/wasCha nge FieldS ize

I wasn't poking fun at you, Drew.  I was pointing out that JC had made a
highly ambiguous reply! ;-}

Charlotte


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 10:39 AM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: Why ChangeFieldSi
ze/wasCha nge FieldS ize


Okay, lets put the claws away, that wasn't very nice CF.

Drew

-----Original Message-----
From: Charlotte Foust [mailto:cfoust at infostatsystems.com]
Sent: Tuesday, December 06, 2005 9:55 AM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: Why Change
FieldSize/wasCha nge FieldS ize


>>  I know I do.

You mean you look back and say "what an idiot Drew was"?? ;->

Charlotte Foust


-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of John Colby
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 7:15 PM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: Why Change
FieldSize/wasCha nge FieldS ize


LOL.  

No, I think maybe you're just growing up.  In 20 years I think you will look
at what you said this year and say "what an idiot I was".  I know I do.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/ -----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of DWUTKA at marlow.com
Sent: Monday, December 05, 2005 9:29 PM
To: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [Spam] Re: [AccessD] [Spam] Re: [Spam] Re: Why Change Field
Size/wasCha nge FieldS ize

Is it me, or did the magnetic poles just shift?  Something happened, JC and
I agree on a development technique! ;)

Drew
<snip>
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