Charlotte Foust
charlotte.foust at gmail.com
Thu May 26 15:13:54 CDT 2011
What Susan is trying to say politely is that you're making work for yourself. Your users don't need to see the unique identifier, they need to see the information on the client. So provide them with a fill in textbox or two to enter a name and then show them a list of the clients showing name, last visit, etc., and let them select the one they want to see. They may THINK they need a shortcut ID, but that leads to other shortcuts that lead to corrupted records and data. They try to memorize IDs to speed things up and it gets them in trouble. Charlotte Foust On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 11:56 AM, John Clark <John.Clark at niagaracounty.com> wrote: > It is going to be used to track their clients. There are 3 alternate surveys, but I think each one can be given multiple times. They want to track the clients and how their dental visit habits change. So, I asked them if they want to know if these same clients return and they are saying yes. > > So, if my example Joe T Murphy is entered as a 5 yr old, and they return and take another survey at 10, and then at 15 and finally at 20, they'll need a way to tell that this was the same person each time. > >>>> "Susan Harkins" <ssharkins at gmail.com> 5/26/2011 2:36 P >>> >> 1) >> The data for the program I am working on, comes w/no real good unique >> identifier, so I'm trying to create my own. The only personal data I am >> getting is name (last, first, MI) and DoB. The rest is survey data. This >> is a dental survey form, and they want to track clients if/as they go from >> infant to adult, so I told them we need some sort of identifier. >> >> The method I've come up with, to create an identifier is using the 1st 3 >> letters of the last name, the 1st 2 of the first name, the middle >> initial...if there isn't one, I place an "X" into the ID...then 6 digits >> of DoB. >> >> For example: a client named Joe T Murphy, born on Dec 7th, 1994 would be >> assigned an ID of MURJOT120794 >> >> It is not air-tight, so to speak, but I don't see another way...I'm just >> looking for opinions on this... > > > =========Who's going to use this identifier and how will they apply it? If > you just need a unique value, just use an AutoNumber. Why are you going to > all this trouble? > > Susan H. > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com > > -- > AccessD mailing list > AccessD at databaseadvisors.com > http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd > Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com >