Tips on How to describe your issue or question... (1 Viewer)

Hello again all,

I am writing yet another thread that gives beginners to forums some examples of how to describe their issues to professionals. If you are reading this and you're wondering why you're not getting an answer, the examples I am posting here may be of use to you. Alternatively, I have written other short stories that may be of use that can be found in my signature of this posting.


Here are some examples of postings that require the programmer to ask for information from you (these are good questions, but the information is just not there in order to give an answer):

1)

I have a couple of tables, one with student contact info and the other with detailed information about the student. I would like some assistance with a query where I can get each student, their grade level, what year in school they are in, and what class they are currently taking. Can someone help me with this?

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This is a great question, but there is a huge barrier between the application knowledge of the poster and the application knowledge of the programmer that wants to help. Just keep in mind here that you can't ask "HOW DO I?" with specifics. This is OK: How do I query by form?. It's OK because it applies to everyone and begs for a general explanation that all programmers know how to give. This is NOT OK: How do I extract student class schedules from my table when I have the classes in one table and the student detail information in the other table?. After reading something like that, the programmer is probably thinking this: (......)????


2)

I have a table that looks like this:

ID company ordernumber
1 COMPANY1 555
2 COMPANY3 0929
3 COMPANY1 7710
4 COMPANY3 830-1
5 COMPANY2 3-9921

I need a query that looks like this:

ID company numberofoccurances
1 COMPANY1 1
2 COMPANY1 2
3 COMPANY2 1
4 COMPANY3 1
5 COMPANY3 2

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There is nothing wrong this type of request, but by nature a programmer would look at this and ask you, "Why are you doing this? What do you intend to accomplish?". Better results are abound if you provide the answer to this so they don't have to ask. Because...most likely if the purpose does not pose to be an efficient way of doing what you want to get done, you might get a response that says something like: "It is a better idea to go about it this way...". A purpose/end result is always a good thing to add. The shorter the better in my opinion, but make sure to get to the point quickly if you can without rambling on.

3)

I have a database, which I have to write some really detailed VBA. If any one has any source code, tips, or assistance it would be greatly appriciated. Here is the situation:

The database I have tracks costs and products. There is a purchase number for each product, and only a limited number of purchase numbers based on costs and type of product. Similar products may share purchase numbers, for instance, fresh produce and frozen produce may interchange purchase numbers if the purchase numbers of one are all used and the other has avaliable purchase numbers to use.

For instance:

Frozen produce - 100 Purchase Numbers
Fresh Produce - 75 Purchase numbers
Fresh Meat - 50 Purchase numbers
Fresh Seafood - 25 Purchase Numbers
Frozen Meat - 125 Purchase Numbers
Frozen Seafood - 100 Purchase Numbers

The total number of items are limited to only the number of purchase numbers allowed for each type of product, however if, for instance all 75 purchase numbers have been used for fresh produce, but only 25 used for frozen produce, if more fresh produce is needed, then purchase numbers can be taken from the frozen produce and added to the fresh produce.

The purchase numbers are broken down by currentyear, type, and purchase number :

CY09FRSPRO-001
CY09FRZPRO-001

If we were to cancel the CY09FRZPRO-001 to add a product number to FRSPRO, the new number would be CY09FRSPRO-002

Furthermore, if we have 100 purchase numbers, then we should always have at least that number, if we cancel one, without adding it to another catagory, then a new one should be added to the end of the list of avaliable purchase numbers.

I need to write some code to have this one and to read the purchase numbers from a list, and only allow users to input data limited to the purchase numbers.

I want to try to automate this process, rather than using human input which can have too many errors for record keeping.

I have a few ideas, about this, but I am still fairly new to the whole coding process.

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This is an actual post I recently saw. And let me assure all of you, I am not picking on this person, but I think this is a great example of a project that begs for assistance from a professional programmer. But there IS one problem. It sounds like a project. Projects cost money, but advice doesn't. My advice if you are writing something like this is to just ask the question, "Can someone tell me if I should start with some forms or tables please?". Personally, when I read the above post, I immediately start thinking of all the different methods I could use to complete this. And everytime I do that, I get frustrated, either because it's not my project, or I'm not getting paid for it, or there is too much information floating around in my head to organize and effectively help this person! One question at a time is good when you ask for help because it helps the professional gauge what he/she is getting into with you and whether or not to actually stay involved.


And that's all folks! Hope I helped again!

A real basic question How do you post a question? I can't find anything on the screen that indicates a way to post a question and this is the only way I can find to ask.

gg said:

A real basic question How do you post a question? I can't find anything on the screen that indicates a way to post a question and this is the only way I can find to ask.

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do you mean how to post a new thread?

go to the forum that you want to post a thread on (use the breadcrumbs "Access World Forums > Microsoft Access Discussion" to get back to the menu of them), and just above the list of existing "threads" (which is a collection of posts associated with each other) there is a button-like image with the words "new thread" - click on this and you can make a new thread.

to make a new post in an existing thread, you can either hit "post reply", "quote" someone else's thread and respond to it, or you can use the "quick reply" (or "go to advanced" for more posting options, like adding attachments) at the very bottom of the thread (under all the existing posts for that thread).

NEW THREAD

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NEW POST

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