A Stupid Question !

A

Allen Browne

30 extra Text fields with nothing in them won't take up much space. Each
field might use a byte or 2 per record for overhead.

However, that doesn't make it an acceptable design. In most scenarios, it
would not make sense to say, "There's probably anotther 30 *kinds* of
attribute we need to store that I have not considered." I did include a
couple of user-configuarable fields in one of the very early databases I
created, but they were a waste of space.
 
A

Allen Browne

You can do it, Bob, but I never found it useful in the longrun.

--
Allen Browne - Microsoft MVP. Perth, Western Australia

Reply to group, rather than allenbrowne at mvps dot org.

Bob Vance said:
The thought behind it was if I wanted to add a field to my data base I
could use [Spare1] as a field because some of my friends that have the
same data base would only need to import, Forms and queries, or is that
wrong.....Thanks Bob
Allen Browne said:
30 extra Text fields with nothing in them won't take up much space. Each
field might use a byte or 2 per record for overhead.

However, that doesn't make it an acceptable design. In most scenarios, it
would not make sense to say, "There's probably anotther 30 *kinds* of
attribute we need to store that I have not considered." I did include a
couple of user-configuarable fields in one of the very early databases I
created, but they were a waste of space.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
J

John W. Vinson

The thought behind it was if I wanted to add a field to my data base I could
use [Spare1] as a field because some of my friends that have the same data
base would only need to import, Forms and queries, or is that
wrong
Click to expand...

Yes, it's wrong.

You can import data between tables of different "shape"; you just need to
adjust the append query to take data from logically matching fields. New KINDS
of information can either be handled by importing into a new table, perhaps
related one to one to your current table, or by adding a new field when you've
decided that it's important enough to modify your database architecture.
 
B

Bob Vance

If my data base had say 30 extra fields ( that are assigned to nothing)
split in about 7 tables , would they be taking up much space, and would it
be acceptable...Thanks Bob
 
B

Bob Vance

The thought behind it was if I wanted to add a field to my data base I could
use [Spare1] as a field because some of my friends that have the same data
base would only need to import, Forms and queries, or is that
wrong.....Thanks Bob
 
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