Unlinked Forms - Unbound Forms (1 Viewer)

[Mylton]

thank you for the tips.

 

[MajP]

I will have more work to develop the unlinked system, however, it is to guarantee the quality and security of the information as well.

I've also read, that using classes facilitates this approach.
would use Classes to define and assign methods and procedures for certain records.
Ex.:
A Customer Registration form would use a Customer Class, and this class would contain all the methods, properties and procedures of this registration.
Classes are a way to organize the system too and maintenance is easier to do too.
I believe that working with classes is more for an intermediate/advanced level, but if I managed to be a doctor, I don't think I'm a 7-headed animal to learn.

Sorry, that is incorrect. Your "unbound system" will definitely NOT improve data quality and security and most likely will do the opposite. Pretty much guarantee that. Access is designed to manage data using bound forms. They have put a lot of functionality into this design. It has been doing this well for 30 years (as of last month). So I doubt you are going to be the guy that finally comes up with some magical way to do this better.
Instead of wasting your time going in this direction, learn how to build the most functional bound form that ensures data integrity and provides a good user experience. Seems like you do not know how to drive a car yet, but you want to start by racing a Formula One vehicle.

If you want to create a secure application using unbound forms DO NOT USE ACCESS. There are a lot better ways to do that approach. You can build with SQL Server and create a front end in visual studio. It will do whatever you want and only take 1000 times longer to build.

Class modules are great to do lots of things and unbound forms have their place. However, it is unlikely that any of that is needed or even desired to manage your "registration".

Unbound vs Bound Forms

I'm sure this has been brought up many times in various different places but after doing a search, I didn't find a nice one stop shop thread on it explaining the reasoning behind the views (maybe I'm blind). It would be nice to create one single place on the forum where all of our combined...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

 

[Gasman]

but if I managed to be a doctor,

When I worked tech support for a large media provider here in the UK, I took a call from a doctor.
She could not get online, hence the call.

Now the first thing we were told to do, was disable the firewall, but she would have none of it.
So i tried other methods, to no avail, eventually I had to say, 'we will have to disable your firewall', which we then did.

Lo and behold, she could get on ther internet.
Only then does she mention that she got a Norton update at 09:30 and since then she had been unable to connect to the internet. ??????

Worst of it all, was my team leader was listening in to the call, and came over to me after the 30 min call, and said to me 'What is the first thing you should have done?' So I got a telling off for that call.

So please, just being a doctor, might make you au faix with medical matters, but logic?, perhaps not so much?

 

[Mylton]

MajP
“Instead of wasting your time going in this direction, learn how to build the most functional bound form that ensures data integrity and provides a good user experience. Seems like you do not know how to drive a car yet, but you want to start by racing a Formula One vehicle.”

what would be a good start of learning for this?
thank you for the tips.

 

[MajP]

IMO the best resource ever done for Access is the
Access Desktop Developer's Handbook. It was written 20 years ago, but it still is relevant. There will be features that no longer exist or have been improved.
Get it used for cheap (under $20). If you understand the principles in that you will be able to build robust applications.

Access 2002 Desktop Developer's Handbook: 9780782140095: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

Access 2002 Desktop Developer's Handbook: 9780782140095: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

 

[Gasman]

MajP
“Instead of wasting your time going in this direction, learn how to build the most functional bound form that ensures data integrity and provides a good user experience. Seems like you do not know how to drive a car yet, but you want to start by racing a Formula One vehicle.”

what would be a good start of learning for this?
thank you for the tips.

TBF, pretty good analogy.

A lot of new people to Access think that way, in fact Foxpro sort of did that, but you used Scatter Memvar and Gather Memvar to move the data without reference to individual controls.
Using Access as bound where you can, is the way to go. I have been fortunate never to had to use unbound forms.

 

[Mylton]

When I worked tech support for a large media provider here in the UK, I took a call from a doctor.
She could not get online, hence the call.

Now the first thing we were told to do, was disable the firewall, but she would have none of it.
So i tried other methods, to no avail, eventually I had to say, 'we will have to disable your firewall', which we then did.

Lo and behold, she could get on ther internet.
Only then does she mention that she got a Norton update at 09:30 and since then she had been unable to connect to the internet. ??????

Worst of it all, was my team leader was listening in to the call, and came over to me after the 30 min call, and said to me 'What is the first thing you should have done?' So I got a telling off for that call.

So please, just being a doctor, might make you au faix with medical matters, but logic?, perhaps not so much?

MajP
“Instead of wasting your time going in this direction, learn how to build the most functional bound form that ensures data integrity and provides a good user experience. Seems like you do not know how to drive a car yet, but you want to start by racing a Formula One vehicle.”

what would be a good start of learning for this?
thank you for the tips.

understand.
in my country (brazil) i realized that my colleagues have great difficulty expressing themselves to you, analysts and programmers, as well as you to understand what we need.
With that, I decided to learn a little to function as “someone who plays in the midfield”, that is, to understand to explain to both sides.
With that I liked the practicality of access. But from reading so much that a linked form has a higher probability of data corruption than an unlinked one. I realized that I would have to understand and learn more about the subject.
Only that.
Now every professional needs time in his profession to relax. Learning different things helps me a lot.

Thanks again everyone for the tips and information.
They are being quite beneficial.

 

[Mylton]

IMO the best resource ever done for Access is the
Access Desktop Developer's Handbook. It was written 20 years ago, but it still is relevant. There will be features that no longer exist or have been improved.
Get it used for cheap (under $20). If you understand the principles in that you will be able to build robust applications.

Access 2002 Desktop Developer's Handbook: 9780782140095: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

Access 2002 Desktop Developer's Handbook: 9780782140095: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

 

[Mylton]

thank you so much.

 

[MajP]

I also recommend this site for getting the basics of SQL.

SQL Tutorial

W3Schools offers free online tutorials, references and exercises in all the major languages of the web. Covering popular subjects like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Java, and many, many more.

www.w3schools.com

I recommend going through every topic.

In the very early days Access suffered from corruption of data, but now that is mostly unheard of. It is not, however, designed to work over a wifi connection to the backend data or a web based repository. There are many things to do, especially in a multi user environment to improve and ensure data integrity, but making unbound forms is not high on the list as a best practice.

 

[Mylton]

I also recommend this site for getting the basics of SQL.

SQL Tutorial

W3Schools offers free online tutorials, references and exercises in all the major languages of the web. Covering popular subjects like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, SQL, Java, and many, many more.

www.w3schools.com

I recommend going through every topic.

In the very early days Access suffered from corruption of data, but now that is mostly unheard of. It is not, however, designed to work over a wifi connection to the backend data or a web based repository. There are many things to do, especially in a multi user environment to improve and ensure data integrity, but making unbound forms is not high on the list as a best practice.

Thanks for explication.

 

[Pat Hartman]

Set yourself some tasks to help you to learn. Do NOT attempt to build the application. You need to learn lots of stuff first. If you attempt to build the app directly, you will make huge mistakes that you will dig your heels in and resist correcting but foundation is EVERYTHING. If you build on sand, you'll spend all your time patching cracks in the walls.

Start by building a small app for your own use such as a household inventory. You will notice as you try to figure out what to put in the table that you will need to repeat information. For example, fo you want to do the inventory by room? That is logical for most people and easy to organize but do you want to type Master Bedroom for every item? Probably not. You'll eventually find that there are lots of small lookups needed by every application so I've included a third sample to see how this is done. Only the switchboards and the table maintenance are intended to be used "as is" after importing into your own app. The m-m sample is just that. A sample of how to do something you will need to do in pretty much any app you build.

I'm going to post a very simple many-many sample database. It will show you how relationships are defined and a couple of different ways to build forms.

Many-to-many example

I added a new version on 1/16/23 so choose that one rather than the old one unless you specifically want the old one. The old zip file contains both A97 and AXP versions of the database. It uses venue booking as the example and shows the relationship from both sides. A venue main form with...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

This is a simple example of how to build a switchboard/menu and implement basic security. It includes a completely customized switchboard and two others based on modifications to the A2K and A2003 versions of the built in Access switchboard. I have another database that has other samples that do not implement any security.

Switchboard with simple security

This is a custom switchboard. It expands on the Switchboard Items table to add four additional columns to define view/edit/add/delete security levels for switchboard items and forms/reports referenced by them. It includes tables to manage users and also to assign them security levels. The user...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

Table maintenance. used to consolidate simple lookups so you don't have to use embedded lists or define separate tables with forms, etc to manage each one. I first built this app over 40 years ago using COBOL on the mainfrom. So that was long before Access was developed. I rebuilt it in each new application I created after the original one since the technology kept changing but the need and the concept didn't. I finally built it with Access and now I can just easily reuse it.

Table Maintenance Mini-app

When you have several lookup tables in an application, it becomes a pain to create separate tables and maintenance forms to manage the contents. This sample is an application that I first developed over 40 years ago, long before Access was a twinkle in Bill's eye. It was constructed using...

www.access-programmers.co.uk

 

[Mylton]

good evening.

I am flattered by your help.
I have no words to thank.
I will read, read and learn.
thank you so much.
I wish you and everyone a great week.

 

[NauticalGent]

IMO the best resource ever done for Access is the
Access Desktop Developer's Handbook. It was written 20 years ago, but it still is relevant. There will be features that no longer exist or have been improved.
Get it used for cheap (under $20). If you understand the principles in that you will be able to build robust applications.

Access 2002 Desktop Developer's Handbook: 9780782140095: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

Access 2002 Desktop Developer's Handbook: 9780782140095: Computer Science Books @ Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

This isnt the first time you touted this book, some other AWF Heavyweights have as well. I received mine in the mail today - damn hefty book, almost 3 times the size of the 2010 version.