Lightwave
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Among more advanced database designers its standard good practice to separate out customer or client addresses in a table
Typically that table will have something like a number then the company name and address.
Within the job number you refer to the company by its ID (proxy company name).
So lets say the first company you put in the company table is ACM Construction
That record might read
ID Company Name
1 ACM Construction
Now lets say you are contracted to undertake some work for ACM Construction on a particular job. That job is also given a number and in the record you list the company for which that job is being done. Although you can just use a text field and look up the company name professional programmers will tend to refer to the company as 1. Within the design of the form you can use something called a combo box which although storing the value in the table as 1 shows on the screen the company's name in text format. Thus the operator won't notice the difference. If you have lots of jobs for the one company and they change there name then you just go to the table of companies and change the name. Because you haven't changed the ID of the company within the jobs table all names will automatically changed.
You can argue that this is overkill as maybe company names don't change that often or that computers are so powerful that storing a text field is insignificant when cmpared to todays storage capacity.
When people are starting out with databases they tend not to understand the advantages and just do it the way you are considering... VBA is obviously recommending best practice.
Among more advanced database designers its standard good practice to separate out customer or client addresses in a table
Typically that table will have something like a number then the company name and address.
Within the job number you refer to the company by its ID (proxy company name).
So lets say the first company you put in the company table is ACM Construction
That record might read
ID Company Name
1 ACM Construction
Now lets say you are contracted to undertake some work for ACM Construction on a particular job. That job is also given a number and in the record you list the company for which that job is being done. Although you can just use a text field and look up the company name professional programmers will tend to refer to the company as 1. Within the design of the form you can use something called a combo box which although storing the value in the table as 1 shows on the screen the company's name in text format. Thus the operator won't notice the difference. If you have lots of jobs for the one company and they change there name then you just go to the table of companies and change the name. Because you haven't changed the ID of the company within the jobs table all names will automatically changed.
You can argue that this is overkill as maybe company names don't change that often or that computers are so powerful that storing a text field is insignificant when cmpared to todays storage capacity.
When people are starting out with databases they tend not to understand the advantages and just do it the way you are considering... VBA is obviously recommending best practice.
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