Question

I’m having a problem with running a custom function within an Access database. Currently, there’s a process in place to import new data, and assign a foreign key (ENTRY_ID) to -1 for all new rows. A separate process runs to change the -1 to the next number in an incremental sequence.

This is the function:

Public Function GetNextEntry(table As String) As Double
    Dim r As DAO.Recordset
    Dim i As Double

    Set r = CurrentDb.OpenRecordset("SELECT LAST_ENTRY_ID FROM LAST_ENTRY WHERE TABLE_NM='" & table & "';")
    If r.EOF Then
        GetNextEntry = -1
        Exit Function
    End If
    i = r![LAST_ENTRY_ID] + 1
    r.Edit
        r![LAST_ENTRY_ID] = i
    r.Update
    GetNextEntry = i
Exit Function
GetNextEntry_ERROR:
    GetNextEntry = -1
End Function

And this is an extremely simplified version of the query:

INSERT INTO DATA
SELECT GetNextEntry('DATA') AS ENTRY_ID, IMPORT.*
FROM IMPORT

What I expect to get back would look like

ENTRY_ID, NAME, NUMBER
1, 'account 1', '1234567'
2, 'account 1', '1234567'
3, 'account 1', '1234567'
4, 'account 1', '1234567'
5, 'account 1', '1234567'

But I’m actually getting

ENTRY_ID, NAME, NUMBER
1, 'account 1', '1234567'
1, 'account 1', '1234567'
1, 'account 1', '1234567'
1, 'account 1', '1234567'
1, 'account 1', '1234567'

It seems that the function if running only once for the entire group. I can force it to run multiple times by feeding it data from the resulting dataset, but then if I scroll through the data, it will rerun the function each time the row is redrawn to the screen.

This is my long winded way of asking if there’s a better way to accomplish what I’m after. I assume there must be, because this seems overly complicated.

Answer 1

Access is being smart; it does not realize that your function returns a different
value each time.

Try redefining your function as:

Public Function GetNextEntry(table As String, salt as integer) As Double

And then

INSERT INTO DATA
SELECT GetNextEntry('DATA', IMPORT.SOMEINTEGERFIELD) AS ENTRY_ID, IMPORT.*
FROM IMPORT

This way Access will think they GetNextEntry depends on a value from import and will get a new value each time.