How do i create a table that dynamically uses a database?

J

John Senff

I am trying to create a document for customers to an engineering company.
What I would like is for the customers to be able to click on a link, and for
a pre-made table to be populated with data from a database. If another link
is selected the data should change. To be honest i'm not sure what program
to even do this in, but anything in Office 2000 is fine. The database is in
Access, so i thought this would be the right crowd to ask. The ideal
situation is that every link runs a different query and fills the table
appropriately.
Any help on this matter would be greatly apreciated.
Thank you in advance.

John
 
J

John Vinson

On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 02:23:02 -0800, "John Senff" <John
I am trying to create a document for customers to an engineering company.
What I would like is for the customers to be able to click on a link, and for
a pre-made table to be populated with data from a database. If another link
is selected the data should change. To be honest i'm not sure what program
to even do this in, but anything in Office 2000 is fine. The database is in
Access, so i thought this would be the right crowd to ask. The ideal
situation is that every link runs a different query and fills the table
appropriately.
Any help on this matter would be greatly apreciated.
Thank you in advance.

John
Click to expand...

Is this a Word table in a document? Or at Table that you want to
continually empty and refill in your Access database? Or some other
sort of table? I'm not sure I understand.

In an Access environment, the usual approach would be to have a Select
Query which returns the records that you want to see. This Query can
be displayed on a Form, printed on a Report, shown on a web page,
edited (which will edit the underlying tables); pretty much anything
you would want to do. It is generally NOT a good idea to copy the data
redundantly into another Access Table, though it is occasionally
necessary; if it is, then an Append query is the appropriate tool.

John W. Vinson[MVP]
Join the online Access Chats
Tuesday 11am EDT - Thursday 3:30pm EDT
http://community.compuserve.com/msdevapps
 
J

John Senff

Hi, thanks for writing. The thing is, I dont want the customer to have to
type any querys, and Ideally they wont actually see the database at all. The
plan was to do it in word, and there would be images of various tools and an
empty 'tool information' table. The customer would click a tool which would
call a predefined query in the database, and fill the table with that tools
info. Any tool link that was clicked would just overwrite the tables current
information with its own. I wanted the customer to only have to see and use
a single file- effectively just a catalogue, but with no scrolling to find
the desired tool.
Thanks.

John
 
J

John Vinson

Hi, thanks for writing. The thing is, I dont want the customer to have to
type any querys, and Ideally they wont actually see the database at all. The
plan was to do it in word, and there would be images of various tools and an
empty 'tool information' table. The customer would click a tool which would
call a predefined query in the database, and fill the table with that tools
info. Any tool link that was clicked would just overwrite the tables current
information with its own. I wanted the customer to only have to see and use
a single file- effectively just a catalogue, but with no scrolling to find
the desired tool.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Again:

You seem to be assuming that the data must be in a table in order to
present it to the user.

That assumption IS WRONG. It is NOT necessary, nor is it desirable, to
put selected data into a table for presentation to the user.

Word is not a database manager. You could probably write some fancy
VBA code in a Word Macro to search an Access database, but even there,
creating a table would be *the wrong way to go*.

The simplest approach would be an Access Form with a Listbox
presenting the names (not images) of the tools; clicking on a name
could be easily programmed to run a Query selecting the information
about that tool for display on the form. If you want the pictures, I'd
still use a Form with the pictures, with a transparent command button
overlying each picture; again, clicking the button would run a Query
selecting the information pertaining to that tool, and opening a Form
for onscreen use, or a Report for printing, based on that query.


John W. Vinson[MVP]
Join the online Access Chats
Tuesday 11am EDT - Thursday 3:30pm EDT
http://community.compuserve.com/msdevapps
 
J

John Senff

Hi again.
Cheers for that, i'll give it a go and post again if i find a problem- it
should be ok though.
Thanks again for the help.
John
 
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