[AccessD] RE: Getting Started

Just thought I would add my comments to this discussion.

There is always going to be round-off issue with numeric data. To keep these
problems to minimum it is advisable to process the round-off at the time of
entry.

Given: A tax that is 7.5% of an invoice total.
When calculated, on say $115.18 the amount is total invoice is $123.8185
with tax being  $8.6385. The amount that will be paid is $123.82 with the
tax being $8.64. These are the two numbers that stored not the raw
uncalculated tax and invoice values.

At the end of the fiscal year the tax totals can just be added and the
summary will perfectly match the invoice total. A value, in a database that
has to be added and then round-off performed will result in differences and
accumulative errors.

HTH
Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]On Behalf Of Brett Barabash
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 9:42 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: RE: [AccessD] RE: Getting Started


>The lady I am working for is quite upset about what we've termed "The
Rounding Issue" of Access.

If you google for info on floating point data storage, you will learn that
this is definitely not an Access-specific issue.  For example, we have an
accounting system on a SQL Server 2000 platform that has the same quirks
(funny, I don't recall receiving an invoice for 11.7687381!).  It is an
inherent difficulty of converting numerical data to/from the binary format
in which it is stored.

Now, OTOH, Access has a lousy (inconsistent) Round function built into it.
There are several alternatives to that.  Gustav wrote a pretty good one, for
example.


-----Original Message-----
From: David Lind [mailto:David_Lind at acordia.com]
Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 11:27 AM
To: Robert L. Stewart
Cc: accessd at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [AccessD] RE: Getting Started


Robert,

Thanks for the suggestions.

Right now my being self-taught is the biggest problem. Because I am
self-taught, I've managed to not teach myself good programming basics. (I am
looking into legal action against myself right now!) The biggest problem I
have is non-normalized tables. The tech came down and spent 3 days here and
one of the biggest issues was the normalization of the tables. (I have one
table with 80+ fields including the ANPK. Didn't realize it was quite that
bloated!) There are other issues such as I have a financial table currently
setup that handles both debits and credits. However multiple debits can
refer to a single credit and sometimes multiple credits can refer to a
single debit. The lady I am working for is quite upset about what we've
termed "The Rounding Issue" of Access. I never realized that Access
automatically figures everything out to the 11th decimal point on
calculations. That creates a real problem when trying to get exact finances
and a clear statement for an insurance bil! l! Those are just the big
problems, and I haven't even begun to scratch the surface.

I would love to get as much input as possible to get things fixed (in fact I
wouldn't mind 2nd or 3rd opinions on what the tech we had said), however, we
have strict security issues and I think the tech that helped had to have
blood drawn, produce three forms of ID, prove that the last 4 generations of
his and his wife's families were not in any way linked to any possible
criminal activity and promise the life of his firstborn child (if he ever
has one) just to be allowed to look at our data. The database I'm working on
is for the Medical Malpractice division of an insurance company that was
recently bought by a bank, so we have all kinds of security and privacy
issues involved.

David


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