Access JumpStart 2.0 | Email Archive
A Rapid Development Framework for Microsoft Access
Email Archive
A day in the life
I worked on copying some class objects and modifying behavior for them to allow the system to process different customers with different information. I am building the system based on exports from a database into a folder of CSV files. The user decides which files to...
Working in small chunks – deliver faster
This is a tip from experience. It is always better to work in smaller chunks and deliver them as quickly as possible than it is to take weeks, months, or gulp... years to deliver the product. The longer it takes to deliver, the less the customer will remember what...
Checking open forms and shutting down Access from code
Today I had fun with Access events and closing the database with unfinished changes to a form that needed to stay open and prevent Access from closing. The problem was that records were able to get to an invalid state by: Users re-opening a form to edit a new record....
Daily writing ideas
Most of the time I come up with new ideas to write about based on what Access work I have done that day. Other sources have been things I've been interested in like Test Driven Development, Code Katas, and using AI as some examples. Basically, now can you utilize...
Types of Microsoft Access Installers and Launchers I’ve built
I'm going to need to be updating one of my applications soon which is a suite of apps packaged using the excellent installer tool: SSEsetup: https://ssesetup.com/ This tool creates installers for Windows programs, but has specific features which directly integrate...
Using combo boxes to select an entry and update form fields
Yesterday I mentioned a technique I use to hide repeated report fields: https://www.accessjumpstart.com/hiding-duplicate-records-using-running-totals-over-a-group/ Today, I will discuss another technique I use to update fields on a form based on columns in a combo box...
Hiding duplicate records using running totals over a group
I was using a quick technique today to hide certain fields on a report detail section that were repeating. There is a very quick solution to this in which you can use the "Hide Duplicates" property in the Format properties of a text box let's say. But what if it's not...
Simple vs Clever
Sometimes, I can be too clever for myself. My future self that is. Fancy queries that do everything I need can be satisfying to write, but sometimes the tradeoff is complexity in the query that makes it difficult to understand and update as needed. Then if you have...
Using a Null Object pattern in VBA Polymorphic classes
If you have an interface class object and you implement several types of the object, what can you do when your object has no handler? That's where the Null Object pattern comes into play. Here's an example of how you could implement the Null Object Design Pattern in...
Quoting big blocks of SQL with MZ-Tools
The last few days I've been adding lots of VBA code for updating views and tables to put new fields into my SQL Server backend. I've been using the MZ-Tools regular expression search and replace tool to do some heavy lifting for quoting paragraphs of SQL generated...
Simple Code Kata – Reverse a string
Here is another simple code kata produced for me by CoPilot. Thanks CoPilot! Task: We need a function that can reverse a given string. Examples (input → output): "hello" → "olleh" "VBA" → "ABV" "12345" → "54321" Ok, so first I will create the test cases and then...
Why use code katas?
I enjoyed doing yesterday's code kata. See that here: https://www.accessjumpstart.com/super-simple-code-kata/ So the goal was to write a function to convert an integer into a string and had 3 different situations to test. The majority of the code in yesterday's...
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