Bill Benson
bensonforums at gmail.com
Fri May 23 15:03:43 CDT 2014
I am starting to run into some struggles with bound controls. I wonder if I will find agreement in this crowd. My current situation is that I have companies, drivers, events, and scheduled notifications (associated with those events) in a CRM-like tool. The reminders can be auto-generated based on data in those tables, or can be over-ridden. I am not storing the default reminder text because it can be created via a formula, and does not need to be referenced except as a basis for manual reminder text, or to create a reminder at time of send. Manual text is beyond the effects of changes in other table data; but this is not to say that it should not be re-validated with the user as changes occur. For example, one default reminder might be "Dear [William Benson], Your [truck needs to be inspected] on or before [June 15th, 2014]. Please attend to this and notify [DriverUpdates at ABC.COM] of the completion date and the updated due date. This is your [2nd] reminder. Sincerely, [Joe at ABC.Com]". If alternate reminder at time=T1, is "Dear Bill etc" instead of "Dear William Benson etc". this is no longer linked in any way to the other raw data. The driver can later be changed from William Benson to Jonathan Appleseed in one of two ways, without impacting "Dear Bill". FKDriverID might get changed in the Event table to a value that that retrieves the name Jonathan Appleseed from the Drivers table; or the Drivers table name associated ID = Event.FKDriverID might get updated from William Benson to Jonathan Appleseed. I recognize my duty as programmer to be aware when these changes occur, and their impact on reminder text (and other free-form data) in the database. I feel it is easier to handle this at a form level of validation and not at a field level of validation. And that it is easier to do with unbound controls, rather than have to put data checks in the BeforeUpdate events of all controls that might impact a downstream record. Anyone have comments on this?