I have a vacation database that tracks gained and used time. I have just found a shortfall in my applications design. For national holidays our managers that work receive a deferred holiday. I have found that my data entry form is tiedious to enter a single event for each userid. Is is possible to have a form that will input the same basic information for many different userid's?
Table: SchedulingLog (uses a composite primary key)
LogID - UserID(pri) - LogDate - EventDate(pri) - Category(pri) - CatDetail(pri) - Value
auto# abc123 1-1-13 1-1-13 DH DH Gain 1
auto# def789 1-1-13 1-1-13 DH DH Gain 1
auto# xyz567 1-1-13 1-1-13 DH DH Gain 1
My Current Form has a drop box to select the manager, then all of the corresponding fields for the table SchedulingLOG. What my ultimate goal is to be able to batch enter the DH event for some 100 different users by some form of checkboc or list box for multi users for the userid, and then key the remaining fields. Then click an update event that will generate a record for each user with the same information (except userid of course).
Related
I am new to NoSql and DynamoDb, but from RDBMS..
My tables are being moved from MySql to DynamoDb. I have tables:
customer (columns: cid [PK], name, contact)
Hardware (columns: hid[PK], name, type )
Rent (columns: rid[PK], cid, hid, time) . => this is the association of customer and Hardware item.
one customer can have many Hardware Items and one Hardware Item can be shared among many customers.
Requirements: seperate lists of customers and hadware items should be able to retrieve.
Rent details- which customer barrowed which Hardeware Item.
I referred this - secondary index table. This is about keeping all columns in one table.
I thought to have 2 DynamoDb tables:
Customer - This has all attributes similar to columns AND set of hardware Item hash keys. (Then my issue is, when customer table is queried to retrieve only customers, all hardware keys are also loaded.)
Any guidance please for table structure? How to save, and load, and even updates ?
Any java samples please? (couldn't find any useful resource which similar to my scenario)
Have a look on DynamoDB's Adjacency List Design Pattern
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/bp-adjacency-graphs.html
In your case, based on Adjacency List Design Pattern, your schema can be designed as following
The prefix of partition key and sort key indicate the type of record.
If the record type is customer, both partition key and sort key should have the prefix 'customer-'.
If the record is that the customer rents the hardware, the partition key's prefix should be 'customer-' and the sort key's prefix should be 'hardware-'
base table
+------------+------------+-------------+
|PK |SK |Attributes |
|------------|------------|-------------|
|customer-cid|customer-cid|name, contact|
|hardware-hid|hardware-hid|name, type |
|customer-cid|hardware-hid|time |
+------------+------------+-------------+
Global Secondary Index Table
+------------+------------+----------+
|GSI-1-PK |GSI-1-SK |Attributes|
|------------|------------|----------|
|hardware-hid|customer-cid|time |
+------------+------------+----------+
customer and hardware should be stored in the same table. customer can refer to hardware by using
SELECT * FROM base_table WHERE PK=customer-123 AND SK.startsWith('hardware-')
if you hardware want to refer back to customer, you should use GSI table
SELECT * FROM GSI_table WHERE PK=hardware-333 AND SK.startsWith('customer-')
notice: the SQL I wrote is just pseudo code, to provide you an idea only.
Take a look at this answer, as it covers many of the basics which are relevant to you.
DynamoDB does not support foreign keys as such. Each table is independent and there are no special tools for keeping two tables synchronised.
You would probably have an attribute in your customers table called hardwares. The attribute would be a list of hardware ids the customer has. If you wanted to see all hardware items belonging to a customer you would:
Perform GetItem on the customer id. Or use Query depending on how you are looking the customer up.
For each hardware id in the customer's hardware attribute, perform a GetItem on the Hardware table.
With DynamoDB you generally end up doing more in the client application relative to an RDBMS solution. The benefits are that its fast and simple. But you will find you probably move a lot of your work from the database server to your client server.
I have a form a manager fills out for each employee once a week as an audit. Currently the form is in Excel. They would like this data to be tracked over time to review for trends. What they are asking for is basically a one to many relationship. Each answer on the form should create a new record in the table rather than one record per audit form. There are 34 audit questions which can result in either yes, no or n/a. Most of my experience is in SQL and Oracle databases so I am not very familiar with Access. They are looking for a form in Access they can input the audit response and then I can create trends and so forth in Tableau.
So for example Rep: Ms. Smith Date of audit: 09/10/2016 then each of the 34 questions with a year or no response. I cannot seem to manage to get the form working without having to enter the reps name 34 times. Any recommendations for an Access newbie?
Correct me if I misunderstood your question, but here is what I would do.
You can create 2 tables, one called Representative, the other Audit.
In the table Representative, create a field Rep_Name and let Access create an AutoNumber primary key.
In the table Audit, create a field Date/Time for the date of the audit, create a Number field Rep_ID, 34 Yes/No fields for your Audit questions and let Access create an Autonumber primary key.
Then in Database Relationships, link your Representative>ID with Audit>Rep_ID.
You can then create 2 forms, one where the User select/enters his name, and a second form where the date is entered/pre-filled and the questions will be asked. You can link both forms using a button.
So I have a form I have Vendors fill out when they want to ship to us. It's an excel form that I then import into Access so I can run reports. Sometimes when they send the form back it's in a format in which I have to manually enter the data into our database.
The form looks like this:
The middle section is just for example purposes so it's a rectangle with text in it.
So everything seemed simple enough until I got to the middle section. See in my excel form I have a section for multiple PO's and units. So essentially each shipment can have one to many PO's and Units. Currently I can approach this task with the redundant method of reentering information per PO on the form. But I want to make this simple.
So the task at hand is that I want to have a form field for PO's and Units where I can input multiple lines of information so that when I hit a submit button. It appears in the database on separate lines with the same vendor information.
So if I filled out my form had this in the middle section:
PO | Units
111111 22
222222 33
333333 44
When I hit submit I want it to attach the rest of the forms information to each PO on separate lines so it'd be like:
Vendor | City | State | PO | Units
Nike Memphis TN 111111 22
Nike Memphis TN 222222 33
Nike Memphis TN 333333 44
So how would I go about accomplishing this task?
From your description of the problem and your example of how the data appears to ultimately be stored in Access it looks to me like you are using Access as a spreadsheet and not as a database. This is ok, but you might want to consider normalizing the data to take advantage of the power of databases in general.
For example:
Create a Vendors table whose sole purpose is to keep details about each Vendor you work with. A very basic implementation would have an ID field to uniquely identify each vendor and a Name field for the vendor name.
If Vendors will only ever have a single location you could also store City, State, ZipCode and Email in this same Vendor table, but I suspect having a separate VendorLocation or VendorAddress table would be a better fit long term.
Create a VendorShipment table that tracks the higher level information on your mockup, such as:
ShipmentID (primary key of this table)
VendorID (foreign key back to Vendor table)
Ready Date
Carrier
Estimated Cost
FreightClass
Tracking #
Estimated Transit Time
Finally, create a VendorShipmentDetail table that tracks the information of each shipment, including:
ShipmentDetailID (primary key of this table)
ShipmentID (foreign key back to VendorShipment table)
PO
Units
Any other details that you want to or need to track
Organizing and storing the data in a normalized fashion would ultimately help simplify your data entry \ data management process and potentially make for a better user experience.
For example, rather than having to enter the Vendor Name, Address information, etc. each time you could instead use a combo box control that is tied to the Vendor table. If the Vendor exists in the table you select it from the list and you already have the Address information, no need to re-enter it each time. If the Vendor did not already exist you enter it once (probably on a Vendor screen where you maintain the details for each Vendor) and draw upon the information in the future.
You would then use queries to tie the information back together for reporting purposes (de-normalize the information).
The art of database design can take a while to pick up, but a good starting point might be to check out the Northwind database that Microsoft has maintained over the years. It has some examples you could draw from immediately to get a practical understanding of how to use normalization within Access. You can find more information here: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/northwind-sales-web-database-TC101114818.aspx
Here is my requirement.
Front (Client) end will do a search based on predefined conditions (for instance: customer id, account number, first name, last name, etc). I need to get the data corresponding to this request from a db2 database and send it back to them (Server). We use CICS channels and containers to pass requests and responses between the Client and Server.
Front end needs the data ordered by: Receive date descending, Customer id Ascending, Account number Ascending. Data are fetched in pages of 500 records. For example, if for a search request from front end would retrieve 50,000 records from the db2 database, we need to return this data in 500 record "pages". For pagination concept, we use the field security deposit number which is primary key to our database but the sorting order is not based on this field.
I would like to know whether we can use scrollable cursor logic in CICS to implement pagination.
Please note that I do not prefer to go for internal array bubble sort to send the data in response as it would degrade performance. I like to do it via query logic.any thoughts?
Example (Initial Front end input request):
Customer id : A
First time request (To identify whether it is first time or next or previous request for pagination)
First security deposit number : 0
Last security deposit number : 0
Since this is first time request, both this field will be having zero from front end and we need to retrieve records from database based on condition of security deposit > 0
Db2 database:
There are 700 records for this criteria
Mainframe response for first time:
We will send the first 500 records
Front end will then send request for getting next set of records which will contain:
Customer id: A
Next request
First security deposit numbr: 0
Last security deposit number : 17980
So for this detail, if I query my datbase based on security deposit number > 17980, it may result in duplicate records listing in the screen once again since our sorting order in database is not based on security deposit number
How to impelement this logic??
Many Client/Server applications in an IBM Mainframe environment involve psuedo conversational CICS transactions.
If you are using CICS in psueudo conversational mode it
is not possible for the Server to hold cusors when it RETURNs to the Client. Therefore scrollable cusors
are of little use in this environment. So to answer your basic question: No scrollable cursors cannot be used here.
The "trick" here is to create an SQL predicate in the Server that is restartable. It will then pick up rows in the correct order from any given
stating point. When the Client calls your Server it must pass all of the positioning information to your Server.
Typically, on a first call from a Client all of the positioning values are set to cause the cursor to
position itself starting with what must be the the first row. The Server then pulls in a "page" worth of data
and returns it to the Client. On the next page forward request the Client sets these positioning values to
the last row it displayed and calls the Server for the next "page" of data.
In your situation I would assume that the page forward cursor would look something like this, all the
variables prefixed with RESTART... are what the Client must provide to the Server to start the cursor
in the correct position.
DECLARE CURSOR Page-forward FOR
SELECT Receive_Date, Customer_id, Account_Nbr, Security_Dep_Id
FROM Table_Name
WHERE ( (Receive_Date < :RESTART-RCV-DT)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id > :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id = :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID AND
Account_Nbr > :RESTART-ACCT-NBR)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id = :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID AND
Account_Nbr = :RESTART-ACCT-NBR AND
Security_Dep_Id > :RESTART-SEC-DEP-ID))
ORDER BY 1 DESC, 2 ASC , 3 ASC, 4 ASC
For the initial call the Client would have passed something like '9999-12-31' as the RESTART-RCV-DT, zero
for the RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID, RESTART-ACCT-NBR and SEC-DEP-ID (assuming these are all numeric). If you look at
the cursor predicate carefully you can verify that there cannot be any rows prior to these values - therefore this
will return the first page of data. If the Client needs to page forward after this, it must tell the Server to start
with the next row after the last one it received. To do this it would populate the RESTART... variables with
the values from the last row on the page it just
displayed. This process will drive the cursor selects forward one page at a time.
When paging up, the process is reversed (you will need a second cursor to support this, and the Client needs to tell you which direction to page: Forward or Back). The Client
will need to populate the RESTART variables with the first row it recieved from the Server. The trick
for the Server on a page up request is to return the data
to the Client in reverse order. You may have to populate the data page passed back
to the Client in reverse order (ie. put the first row retrieved into the last row of the paging area shared between
the Client and the Server). The page backward cursor would look something like:
DECLARE CURSOR Page-backward FOR
SELECT Receive_Date, Customer_id, Account_Nbr, Security_Dep_Id
FROM Table_Name
WHERE ( (Receive_Date > :RESTART-RCV-DT)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id < :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id = :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID AND
Account_Nbr < :RESTART-ACCT-NBR)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id = :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID AND
Account_Nbr = :RESTART-ACCT-NBR AND
Security_Dep_Id < :RESTART-SEC-DEP-ID))
ORDER BY 1 ASC, 2 DESC , 3 DESC, 4 DESC
As has been pointed out in other answers, this type of paging process does not manage or detect concurrent
updates to the database that may occur duing paging transactions. That is another topic for another day...
Developing Restartable Cursors
The the key to building a paging Server is to develop a cursor that is restartable from a set of values received
from a Client transaction. This leaves control of cursor positioning and direction with the Client.
It also means the Client must receive all critical positioning data from the Server even though
the Client might not actually
use these data for any other purpose (e.g. From your question I got the impression that the Client may not require
the Security Deposit Id except to supply as a positioning parameter for your Server)
To build a paging Server you need to know
what the required sorting order of the data are (e.g. Receive Date Descending then Customer Id Ascending then
Account Number Ascending).
You also need know the set of data that uniquely identify a row
returned by the cursor. In your case that would be the Security Deposit Id (this is the primary key for the
table you are selecting from so it must be unique for each and every row in that table). Knowing this you then build a
cursor predicate (the stuff in the WHERE clause) that will return data needed by the Client in the required sort order that
also includes
the full positioning key (i.e. Security Deposit Id). In the event that two or more returned rows may contain identical data if
the final positioning key were elimiminated makes it important that the positioning key be included as a sort condition.
It doesn't matter if it is ascending or descending, but it needs to be included on the sort to ensure consistent
order of data retrieval.
A fairly simple formula may be followed to build the predicate for a restartable cusor needed to
support paging Servers. Basically this is a cascade of "OR" clauses connecting a series of "AND" clauses
that become progressively more selective following the sort order required by the Client and end up with the positioning
key.
To see how this works consider how the query for your Server might be developed...
Start with the column from the sort order that changes least often...
SELECT ...
FROM ...
WHERE Receive_Date < restart value
This will retrieve all rows prior to the specified restart Receieve date regardless of what the other
column restart values are (e.g. Customer ID's can range from minimum to maximum values, as long as the Receive Date
is less than any Receive Date "seen" so far). Since this column only changes value after all subortinate sort columns values
have been exausted you can be sure that this does not pick up any rows prior to the full restart key.
But what about those rows that occur on the same date as the restart request but have a
larger Customer Id? These can be picked up with....
SELECT ...
FROM ...
WHERE Receive_Date = restart value AND
Customer_id > restart value
What about those where the Receive Date and Customer Id are the same as the restart key but have
a larger Account Number? These can be picked up with...
SELECT ...
FROM ...
WHERE Receive_Date = restart value AND
Customer_Id = restart value AND
Account_Nbr > restart value
Continue this pattern until the full restart key has been processed. Notice that the inequality
signs are determined by the sort order. Use < when the column is sorted Descending and > when Ascending.
Also notice that the SELECT and FROM clauses
are exactly the same for each query - which means you can put them all together using OR conjuctions...
SELECT Receive_Date, Customer_id, Account_Nbr, Security_Dep_Id
FROM Table_Name
WHERE ( (Receive_Date < :RESTART-RCV-DT)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id > :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id = :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID AND
Account_Nbr > :RESTART-ACCT-NBR)
OR (Receive_Date = :RESTART-RCV-DT AND
Customer_Id = :RESTART-CUSTOMER-ID AND
Account_Nbr = :RESTART-ACCT-NBR AND
Security_Dep_Id > :RESTART-SEC-DEP-ID))
ORDER BY 1 DESC, 2 ASC , 3 ASC, 4 ASC
There you go... a restartable cursor for forward paging. Construction of the cursor for backward paging follows a similar pattern, just flip the
sort orders and repeat.
A simplistic approach: Write your SQL to retrieve data according to your criteria, in the sort order you specify. Then only retrieve the keys to the rows you want. Save the keys somewhere you will have access to upon subsequent invocations of your transaction. Look into multi-row select in DB2. Also understand pseudo-conversational programming techniques in CICS.
And now we get to the design implications Bill Woodger mentions, that you do not specify in your question, and which are the reason I'm just hitting the high points of a simplistic approach.
If changes to your result set occur between one invocation and the next, your results will not reflect those changes. You must decide if this is important.
You mention a "front end" but do not specify what it is. If it is a BMS application, you may be able to save the keys in your commarea or in a container. If your front end is a distributed application invoking your transactions via CICS Web Services or CICS Web Support or MQ or raw sockets or whatever, you must design a mechanism to store those keys such that you can uniquely retrieve them — perhaps by sending a contrived key back to the distributed application which it must supply upon subsequent invocations. Then you must have some process to clean up your key store.
Creating a solution to your problem that is unique in your IT shop is not something to be done in isolation. You must involve others who will be tasked with maintaining your application, there may be a group external to your project tasked with making such decisions, there may be infrastructure issues with your solution.
So this isn't so much as an answer to your question as it is an elaboration upon why you may not get an answer, or at least the answer you seem to desire.
I need to create a small "application" using ms access 2007. All I need is to create a form that will take care of input/output related to a few db tables.
I created the tables: patients, treatments and labresults.
Primary key in patients table is ID, and it serves as a foreign key in treatments and labresults tables, where it is named patientID.
I also created a form that I mentioned in the beginning of this question. It has multiple tabs. 1st tab opens/creates the patient, and the second one is used to enter data that is to be entered into the labresults table. Same applies to treatments table.
My problem: I added a button to the 2nd tab, and I want to attach an 'action' that will set an INSERT query with values taken from fields (controls) in tab 2, together with ID field taken from tab1 (that corresponds with patient ID from patients table), and then execute a query.
Right now I'm trying to achieve this myself, but with little success. Also, searchin MS site for solution(s) is kind of hard, since it always show results that have 'query' in it :)... And query isn't smt I want to use. (However, I'll accept any solution).
Thx
Tables:
patients
ID - primary key, autogenerated
patientID - internal number of the patient record. I could've used this, but it would complicate my life later on :)
gender
age
dateOfDiagnose
- field names are actually in Serbian, but field names aren't that much important
labtests
ID - primary key
patientID - foreign key, from patients table
... bunch of numerical data :)
There are 2 more tables, but they basically reflect some additional info and are not as important.
My form needs to enable user to enter data about the patient, and then enter several rows in labtests table, as treatment progresses. There are 2 types of treatment, and there is a table related to that, but they only have few fields in it, containint info about the start of the treatment, and the rest is info about lab tests.
It is quite possible to run SQL under VBA, but I suspect that it may be easier to simply set up the form properly. For example, if you set up the ID as the Link Child & Master fields for the lab results subform (which I hope you are using), then it will be filled in automatically. Furthermore, it is also possible to set the default value of a control to the value that was previously entered with very little code. I therefore suggest that you add some notes on what you wish to achieve.
Some further notes based on subsequent comment
From your comments, it appears that you have a minimum of three relevant tables:
Patients
PatientID PK, Counter
Treatments
TreatmentID PK, Counter
PatientID FK
TreatmentTypeID FK
LabResults
LabResultID PK, Counter
TreatmentID FK
PatientID FK <-- Optional, can be got through TreatmentID
LabResultTypeID FK
In addition, you will need a TreatmentTypes table that list the two current treatments and allows for further treatment types:
TreatmentTypes
TreatmentTypeID PK, Counter
TreatmentDescription
You will also need:
LabResultTypes
LabResultTypeID PK, Counter <-- This can be referenced in the LabResults table
TreatmentTypeID FK
There are arguments for PKs other than those suggested, in that you have natural keys, but I think it is easier when working with Access to use autonumbers, however, you will need indexes for the natural keys.
I strongly recommend that all tables also include date created, date modified/updated and a user ID for both. Access does not keep this data, you must do it yourself. Date created can be set by a default value, and if you are using the 2010 version, the other fields can have 'triggers' (data-level macros), otherwise, you will need code, but it is not too difficult. Note also that these same 'triggers' could be used to insert relevant records : Meet the Access 2010 macro designer.
Your form will contain records for each patient and two subforms, Treatments and LabResults. The Treatments subform is bound to the Treatments table having PatientID for LinkChild and Master fields and a combobox for TreatmentTypeID:
Rowsource: SELECT TreatmentTypeID, TreatmentDescription FROM TreatmentTypes
ColumnCount: 2
BoundColumn: 1
After a treatment type is added to the Treatments subform, you can run a query, or run SQL under VBA. You can either use the After Insert event for the form contained by the treatments subform or a button, the After Insert event has advantages, but it is only triggered when the user saves the record or moves from the record, which is the same thing. Working from the treatments subform, and the After Insert event, the SQL would be on the lines of:
''Reference Microsoft DAO x.x Object Library
Set db = CurrentDB
sSQL = "INSERT INTO LabResults (TreatmentID, PatientID, LabResultTypeID) " _
& "SELECT " _
& Me.TreatmentID & ", " _
& Me.PatientID & ", " _
& "LabResultTypeID FROM LabResultTypes " _
& "WHERE TreatmentTypeID " = & Me.TreatmentTypeID
db.Execute sSQL
MsgBox "Records inserted: " & db.RecordsAffected
Me.Parent.LabResults_Subform.Form.Requery
The query should also include the date and username, as suggested above, if your version is less than 2010 and you have not set up triggers.
You will be tempted to use datasheets, I suspect, for the subforms. I suggest you resist the temptation and use either single forms of continuous forms, they are more powerful. For an interesting approach, you may wish to look at the Northwind sample database Customer Orders form.