Question

Dynamic forms in Access 2003

Asked by: solution46

All,

I need to build a fully dynamic form and wondered what your thoughts are. I know this question has been asked before (here... http://www.experts-exchange.com/Databases/MS_Access/Q_20740355.html) but this was a while ago and I'm wondering if any of you have any other ideas.

In short, the user can define a series of 'questions and answers'. These questions can have a variety of different types of answers (current data types are long text, a series of checkboxes, a drop-down option list and short text). These will need to be represented on a form, which obviously is initially undefined. The table structure is defined and working; it is just rendering the form that is causing me problems.

My eventual aim is to get this written in ASP.NET. However, before I get that far I need to sort out a working demo / prototype and, rightly or wrongly, I have chosen Access to do this. The good thing is that the system will never be 'live' so it doesn't have to be massively resilient and frequent compact & repairs wont be an issue.

Options I have so far are:
1. A continuous form bound to a table of Qs and As. Each record will have a combo box, series of check boxes and so on; various controls to be hidden / shown as required. I think this can be done with conditional formatting but it doesn't lend itself at all well to the varying physical sizes of the questions (some may have a single line of text, some may have a dozen or more checkboxes to list).
2. Writing the form in code using CreateControl.

At the moment, option 2 is my preferred route (bit of a nightmare to write but flexible enough to be possible) but I want to know if you have any other ideas.

As this is both quite tricky and bl**dy urgent :), max points are available and I'll open up another q to give more points for staggeringly good suggestions.

Cheers,

s46.

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Asked On
2005-04-22 at 14:30:27ID21399468
Tags

access

,

dynamic

,

2003

,

form

Topic

Microsoft Access Database

Participating Experts
1
Points
500
Comments
2

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Answers

 

by: stevbePosted on 2005-04-22 at 14:41:09ID: 13846939

for a quick and dirty demo I would make a form with a boat load of each type of control you intend them to be able to define and then show/hide/set properties at runtime rather than wading through all of the CreateControl syntax.

The only limit on the number of controls on a form is something like 754 over the *lifetime8 of the form. THis means if you add a textbox nad then delete it, Access continues to increment the control counter. This should not be an issue because you will only be building this 1 time.

Steve

 

by: solution46Posted on 2005-04-26 at 08:29:27ID: 13867864

stevbe,

not sure why cheating didn't occur to me too!

Still, worked nicely like that so thanks.

s46.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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