building a database from scratch (1 Viewer)

The_Doc_Man

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Wrong forum for this discussion, but as storms go, Barry is so ill-formed that he won't be able to reach a massively destructive status. Isolated heavy rain, spot flooding, but nothing major. As of the time I am filing this, he is right at landfall and there is a debate on whether Barry was ever a hurricane. I'll get some rain. I'll have to police the yard of fallen twigs and small leaf clusters. My back will ache from all that pickup. And then it will be over. Been there, done that, wore out the T-shirt.
 

Pat Hartman

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And finally -
There are a number of items that I include in every app. Some of them are static, meaning that they never change and others are generally customized for each app. For example, I use the same menu table and form for all apps. I just add different graphics and maybe different colors if the client has a preference for form color. I also keep what I call a table of tables mini-app. It is two tables, a form with a subform and two reports. The theory behind this is that EVERY app needs some number of lookup tables and some apps need lots of them. So rather than reinvent the wheel, I standardized on how to handle simple lookup lists so that i didn't have to take on the maintenance task personally but could turn it over to an admin user (I don't like letting people just add codes on the fly. They are usually too sloppy and they end up creating dups caused by poor spelling). Most of the tables, I allow the user admin to maintain but some must be under programmer control (me) because code needs to be written to process certain things. Security. Most apps require some small security so I have a standard set of forms and functions I can just add into an app. Sometimes reporting requires a lot of options so I have a report manager that is modified slightly for each project but the concept remains the same.

As you develop more apps, you'll come up with your own toolbox. There really is no benefit to recreating the wheel for every new application. My table of tables has existed as a concept since the early 80's. I first created it in COBOL with an IMS/DB database. Now of course, it is done with Access forms, VBA, and either ACE or linked ODBC tables.
 

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