John Clark
John.Clark at niagaracounty.com
Fri May 27 09:41:07 CDT 2011
>>> "Susan Harkins" <ssharkins at gmail.com> 5/26/2011 4:48 P >>> The same problem will exist with a lookup interface, but the potential error will be more obvious--hopefully. If you force the user to create the id on the fly, they're liable to generate an id that exists for someone else and never even know it. Joe T Murphy born on Dec 7th, 1994 Tom M Murphy albo born on Dec 7, 1994 So Joe T. comes in at 14 and gives his name as Tom Murphy, the user plugs in MURTO?120794 which pulls up MURTOM120794 when Joe's id is actually MURJOT120794 but the user isn't paying attention and loads away...of course, you could build in protection, but the potential's there. *** Well, then Joe would be a damn liar, eh?! ;o) *** Seriously though, how could I possibly account for someone giving me the wrong name...w/out having a SSN? Anybody can come in and tell us anything. You'll have the same problem with a lookup interface, but at least, it will be more obvious that there's more than one Murphy on the same birthdate -- not sure how to avoid a problem like this other than having other than forcing the user to ask for more information when there's more than one record that might fulfill a request. "I have two Murphy's born on that date -- can I have your full name please?" -- interesting problem. *** I've already been thinking about something like this...just if it comes up that it is already an entered name/ID. But, I probably wouldn't bother, unless in conflicted. Don't these folks have a patient id? How would the dentist in question identify the two patients -- what criteria are they currently using? *** There is no dentist involved actually. This is just a program through the health department, for tracking. I have this sort of problem a lot -- even when I write my name down, people have trouble with it and want to pull up records for Susan Hawkins, Susan Parkins, Susan Haskins -- happens to me all the time. So, this is really more than a database design problem. *** Oh, believe me...w/your name is "John Clark" you know all about this...hell, I've almost gotten arrested over it.