Question

im doing my intership. My job right now is to develop a access application for tools control in a factory. Several questions here:

1. For a front end/back end structure, i use the external data link in Access and it act as if the tables are local, so i dont need to set up connection or recordset in code like i did before in Excel?

2. For a table i have index like 405679, it’s better to set it in numeric or text?

3. If my application will run just on a Access runtime, is there any restriction in the development?

4. My boss wants that my application can automatically open one ERP software and fill in some blank (date, tool id, tool price etc.). Is it possible? (I dont think so…)

5. I know it’s better to learn from example. Apart from the Northwind, where can i find other example Access applications and codes? (i do some search but what i found are just little app to show a specific technique, not a complete system)

im using Access 2003 (possibly upgrade to 2007)

Thanks!

Answer 1

To answer yours questions

1) Once you link the tables they will work almost exactly like a local table so you can make queries on them etc. There are some restrictions on access them through DAO code but that’s easy to get round if you need to

2) If its is a number only and not shown to the end user then use an autonumber field, that will give you a 32bit number to play with

3) Nope, anything you do in the full fat version of access will be able to be run on the runtime version so no worries there

4) Depends on the ERP system, if it has a web service attached to it or some kind of API then it would be possible. As a real worse case you could even do some automated button pressing but I would not recommend it!

5) Sorry I don’t know if any more example databases but the northwind one is a good learning tool

Let me know if you need any more detail