Basic MS Access Question

[MrGraham]

Hi. Recently started an IT job at a non IT company. Background is mainly Telcomm with some networking, but as I'm sure you guys know they expect IT guys in smaller IT depts to be able to do everything.

I've never touched MS Access. I've been researching some as they use it for a lot of their reports, and I've been able to meet a few of their requests so far, but one thing I haven't figured out is this latest task.

They have a form with a text box that might be a very long entry or a few word entry, and they want it to automatically resize based on whats entered into that box, obviously so the longer entries don't get cut off and the shorter entries don't take a ton of white space up. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to make it resize in the report based on contents. I'm probably missing something really easy.

Thanks for any help.

[MrGraham]

Found the answer about 2 minutes after I posted, under properties of the individual textboxthere's an option for can grow and can shrink.

I knew it'd be easy.

[Benito Fireslinger]

why do people use access? I mean honestly what good does it do? This is not aimed at you but just a general question...

[MrGraham]

Everything I've seen it do so far looks like it could be done better in SQL, so really I don't know. If I had any say I'd get rid of their Access and Exchange crap. We're getting ready to undergo an SAM from Microsoft, and I don't think they realize how much the Exchange cows are going to cost them.

[Zippygoose]

They use it because as he said this is a non-technical company. If they just hired him as "IT guy", meaning the only person there who really knows anything about technology-then they are probably way behind the curve as far as implementing the best possible solution goes.

Bob from accounting probably volunteered to make them a report in Access 98' cause he's "good with computers".

Good luck man, I've been there.

[Vorph]

Originally Posted by Benito Fireslinger

why do people use access? I mean honestly what good does it do? This is not aimed at you but just a general question...

Generally for the built-in forms and reporting tools. You can link an Access db to a view of a SQL database and someone with little to no database skills can easily work with it. The data engine not being robust enough for website/multi-user usage is irrelevant.

[Kallian]

More hating. Mark it down.

Some companies just dont have the need for a l33t full blown RDBMS.

[Slide]

Originally Posted by Vorph

Generally for the built-in forms and reporting tools. You can link an Access db to a view of a SQL database and someone with little to no database skills can easily work with it. The data engine not being robust enough for website/multi-user usage is irrelevant.

Which is exactly what its good for, once you decouple the engine from the interface it's not a bad little product that all the Bobs from accounting are comfortable with. It can be handy for laying out tables on SQL Server too.

As the IT guy your in a good position to total up how much it will cost to bring the company into license compliance as an upfront sum and recurring and use that to justify alternative investment. Outlook is a fairly decent IMAP client after all, and short of the Calendar stuff it's not a big change in workflow to move the backend. Samba is fine if your okay with running in a Domain rather than AD, i'm sure little companies only want network folders and logins anyway.

[MrGraham]

quick and easy coldfusion question I'll tack onto this thread:

What is this line doing with the stuff in the parentheses?

<cfset diff = #dateDiff(\"h\",time_submitted, time_action)#>

Basically this line of code figures out how much time expires between time_submitted and time_action for a ticket tracking system and then builds the results into a graph. This is screwing up whenever time_action is Null in my DB (ticket hasn't been completed yet). I want to add another CFELSEIF line to the following set

 <cfif #diff# LTE 2> <cfset T1 = #IncrementValue(T1)#> <cfelseif #diff# LTE 4 and #diff# GTE 2> <cfset T2 = #IncrementValue(T2)#> <cfelseif #diff# LTE 6 and #diff# GTE 4> <cfset T3 = #IncrementValue(T3)#> <cfelseif #diff# LTE 8 and #diff# GTE 6> <cfset T4 = #IncrementValue(T4)#> <cfelse> <cfset T5 = #IncrementValue(T5)#> </cfif>

which currently breaks it down for the graph into catergories like "<2, 2>4" etc, and I'd like to add another line to categorize tickets that havent been completed yet.

I just don't know what the result is when a null time_action is put into the first line from beginning of post, because I don't understand what's going on in that parentheses or why the "h" is there...

Prod in the right direction would be awesome.

[MrGraham]

I also lose at the forums for not being able to make that code spaced properly ... it shows correctly when i edit but when i refresh the thread it shows it all on one line ... ah well

[Zippygoose]

I've never looked at any coldfusion code but my guess is that the h being passed is specifying that you only want the precision of your date difference to be to the hour and not the entire time (minute, second, millisecond, etc.).

Just a guess though.

[Vorph]

Yep, that's correct, it's specifying hours for the unit of difference between the two dates.

For the null thing, you just need to do a check on date_action first to make sure it isn't null before trying to use it in a DateDiff function.

Not sure what you're asking about the second line of code.

[MrGraham]

OK the fact that datediff is an actual command and not a variable makes sense now, I just assumed it was something from earlier in the page.

I see what I want to do now. Here comes the most basic of basic CF questions - what represents null in equations? I did < cfif time_action IS NULL > and it did not like it.

Edit: I found answer, null is represented by "" in CF commands. Still not able to get code to work, more playtime.