User-Created Queries (A2K SR1)

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Has anyone heard of a “query utility” that would allow users to make their own queries/reports for info I hadn’t thought of in advance?
I dimly remember something like ‘Crystal Reports’ for dBase IV, although I’m not sure it’s exactly the type of thing that I’m looking for.
Surely someone else has received a request for an ‘ad hoc’ query/report gizmo.

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Wouldn’t just the usual Access Report Wizard do this? It has users select the information from the tables, establish sort sequences and breaks, the provides formatting choices.

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Mark:

Thanks for the response.

Yes … if the user knew what a table, query, or report was … AND if I wanted to let him/her into the front end and/or grant the necessary rights to create/modify objects.

I had in mind a sort of “choose from a list” to “fill in the blanks and create a temporary datasheet” utility.

Guess I’ll have to give it a lot of thought and try build it myself … maybe a sort of multiple criteria query/form.

Trust me … “query by form” or “query by selection” is too complicated for my users!

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Actually, I don’t think there is much in the way of permission you need to grant. An owner of an object has full rights, so users with no rights to modify any of the “standard” reports could still create their own reports. At least that’s the way I think security works.

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Ken Getz (Access Developer’s Handbooks, etc.) wrote an example of a query by form approach. I believe I’ve seen it in several places, but try http://www.mvps.org/acess first. Also ELF Software has a natural language query interface you might look into.

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Charlotte and Mark:

Thanks for the responses.

Will look into your suggestions, Charlotte.

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Charlotte:

Thanks again. ELF looks like it might be useful.

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Charlotte:

Purchased and installed ELF. Seemed like a great idea and seemed to work.

Several days later started getting “insuffucient memory – close some apps” (or words to that effect) in Access — particularly in vba code windows. Since I didn’t have other apps open, Access locked.

After a few days of the problem used the Control Panel Add/Remove function to remove the app. “Insuff Memory” problems continued. Just finished today with second complete O2k reinstall (after removal via Control panel and Eraser2k). Also reinstalled Win98 SE.

Am willing to admit that ELF may not have created the problem, but have asked for a refund.

This is NOT a complaint and I thank you for your continuing help. Just thought I’d pass along the info, although there probably won’t be many viewers going back to 10/16.

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There are a bunch of causes for “insufficient memory” and few of them are easy to diagnose. One thing that will cause it is instantiating objects in VBA code and not properly destroying them when you finish with them. Although they’re supposed to get destroyed when they go out of scope, it isn’t a good idea to rely on that, in spite of the code in the Access Developer’s Handbooks. I’m not that trusting, and I’ve seen too many repercussions from not explicitly destroying objects to be comfortable with the minimalist approach.

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Charlotte:

Thanks for the info and suggestions.

My memory problems are gone after the previously mentioned saga.

I realize in that process I may have inadvertently corrected another problem and that the situation wasn’t attributable to ‘elves’, but was following the “what have I done/installed recently?” procedure. LIFO has been axiomatic in trouble shooting since I got hooked on PCs (Apple 2e and VisiCalc).

Thanks again

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Charlotte:

I need to clear up the record on this problem.

ELF was NOT the problem. After a couple of years’ use there were a number of other problems, so I backed up my data, reformatted the drive, installed Win 2k Pro, and reinstalled O2k. Problems have not re-appeared in a week or so.

The solution was perhaps drastic, but I was sort of looking for an excuse to install Win 2k Pro anyhow.

Thanks for the help.

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Charlotte – can I just say thanks for the link you have included to mvps – this had some amazing stuff, which has given me all sorts of ideas! I will never get any work done now!

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