K
Keepitlive
Hi,
I am looking for some advice that's causing me much tearing of hair,
gnashing of teeth and general wailing.
I am doing some voluntary work for a local charity, trying to create
an Access system to capture all client usage of the charity's
services.
The first contact any client has with the charity results in a
Referral form. An existing paper form is being simplified and
clarified and the database system needs to capture this information.
The problem I am having relates to multiple choice questions that
determine the use (or not) of subsequent fields - an example is the
question "Who will be funding this service?"
The 4 choices are:
Client - the client themselves (or nominated individual). Already
captured earlier in the form
Referring Organisation - the organisation that referred this client to
the charity. Already captured earlier in the form.
Other Organisation - any organisation held in the system. Lookup on
table tblOrganisation
Project - any project being run by the charity. Lookup on table
tblProject
If the choice is Client or Referring Organisation, nothing needs to be
done as the information has been captured.
If the answer is Other Organisation, a combo is populated with records
from tblOrganisation
If the answer is Project, a combo is populated with records from
tblProject
The combos are each bound to separate fields in the tblReferral table
and are populated in the AfterUpdate event of an Option Group.
Is this an accepted way of doing this? Because for every record, one
or both of the bound fields will be empty, I have a nasty feeling that
I have missed some blindingly obvious aspect of either db design or
normalisation.
As part of processing the same group of fields, I am also enabling/
disabling fields depending on the choice in the option group. So for
example, if 'Client' is chosen, then both combos are disabled. If
'Other Organisation' is chosen, the Organisation combo is enabled and
the Project combo is disabled etc.
I am doing this for two reasons:
1 - to act as a visual cue for the person inputting the data
2 - to ensure data validity
My second question is:
Is all this form processing (enabling/disabling fields) a waste of
good clock cycles. If so, is there a better way to achieve the same
result or is my database in serious need of redesign?
Thanks to anyone with the patience to read (and, I hope, answer) this.
Chas
I am looking for some advice that's causing me much tearing of hair,
gnashing of teeth and general wailing.
I am doing some voluntary work for a local charity, trying to create
an Access system to capture all client usage of the charity's
services.
The first contact any client has with the charity results in a
Referral form. An existing paper form is being simplified and
clarified and the database system needs to capture this information.
The problem I am having relates to multiple choice questions that
determine the use (or not) of subsequent fields - an example is the
question "Who will be funding this service?"
The 4 choices are:
Client - the client themselves (or nominated individual). Already
captured earlier in the form
Referring Organisation - the organisation that referred this client to
the charity. Already captured earlier in the form.
Other Organisation - any organisation held in the system. Lookup on
table tblOrganisation
Project - any project being run by the charity. Lookup on table
tblProject
If the choice is Client or Referring Organisation, nothing needs to be
done as the information has been captured.
If the answer is Other Organisation, a combo is populated with records
from tblOrganisation
If the answer is Project, a combo is populated with records from
tblProject
The combos are each bound to separate fields in the tblReferral table
and are populated in the AfterUpdate event of an Option Group.
Is this an accepted way of doing this? Because for every record, one
or both of the bound fields will be empty, I have a nasty feeling that
I have missed some blindingly obvious aspect of either db design or
normalisation.
As part of processing the same group of fields, I am also enabling/
disabling fields depending on the choice in the option group. So for
example, if 'Client' is chosen, then both combos are disabled. If
'Other Organisation' is chosen, the Organisation combo is enabled and
the Project combo is disabled etc.
I am doing this for two reasons:
1 - to act as a visual cue for the person inputting the data
2 - to ensure data validity
My second question is:
Is all this form processing (enabling/disabling fields) a waste of
good clock cycles. If so, is there a better way to achieve the same
result or is my database in serious need of redesign?
Thanks to anyone with the patience to read (and, I hope, answer) this.
Chas