[AccessD] VBA Unbound data entry / update form

Drew,

I have to say, what makes sense to you simply is irrelevant 
to this discussion.

My immediate "boss" is a person my age, who was in charge of 
program development at one of the large insurance companies 
in Hartford.  He is now a Vice President and co-owner of 
this company.  He absolutely and completely understands 
normalization and all that other stuff.  We have these 
discussions on a regular basis about the entire database. 
He knows his stuff, and I know mine.  And... HE TOLD ME TO 
DO IT THIS WAY after lengthy discussions about this.

My client TOLD ME TO DO IT THIS WAY.  I was NOT given a 
choice, I was NOT told do it "the right way".

I was TOLD to STAMP the record with the employee initials, 
date and time and place the cursor after the new stamp.  I 
was TOLD to do this at the TOP of the field if any existing 
data.  This in INTENTIONAL DENORMALIZATION.

The client DEMANDED that I do this, because THEY WANT IT 
THAT WAY.  They have their reasons apparently, and in the 
end it simply makes no damned difference whether YOU or 
anyone else in this discussion think the reasons are valid 
or not.

I have received a LOT of "that's a stupid design" crap and I 
am, to be blunt, tired of that aspect of the conversation.

I understand that YOU think this is stupid, that YOU think I 
really should do separate records etc.  I am happy for you.

NOW, can we move on to more useful discussions?

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Drew Wutka wrote:
> JC, you're jumbling bound and unbound concepts.  If you built this form
> so that new records were added, instead of allowing them to edit
> existing records, then you are only going to lock the pages for the
> split second that it takes for Jet to save a new record.  
> 
> It makes much more sense to create new records then to let existing
> records be edited (at least on the scale you are mentioning).  If you
> want to give your users the ability to change someone's name, or
> address, etc, you aren't talking about record change overlap.  But for a
> call log, you should be recording who talked to who and what was said,
> each call should be a new record with that information in it, or tied
> too it.  If the form is unbound, you can make it look like they are
> 'editing' the same record, but in reality, the data they are seeing is
> locally cached, and when they enter data, it is simply tapping the db
> temporarily to save the new data (and retrieve any changes).
> 
> Drew
>