asked on Access 2007 View raw table with ID columns
Hi
In Access 2007 I am looking at the Northwind database at the table Orders.
At the moment I can see eg Employee rather than Employee ID. How do I view
the table with the IDs in certain columns?
In Access 2007 I am looking at the Northwind database at the table Orders.
At the moment I can see eg Employee rather than Employee ID. How do I view
the table with the IDs in certain columns?
Microsoft Access
Last Comment
Murray Brown
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No points please. Yet another reason that table level lookups are bad. They obfuscate the actual value of a column so if two customers have the same name - John Jones but are actually different customers, you would never know it..
ASKER
Thanks John and thank you Pat. I allocated no points as I think you wanted
I don't think Lookup is bad...its just not transparent....to end user....it tries to present human readable data on table data but probably it should include the info that what you see is not what it's stored...probably a simple switch when viewing the table would be most helpful
You're welcome Murry.
John, So you're quite OK with two customers named John Tsioumpris, one good one bad both being reported as paying late? That's the kind of stuff that happens when you obfuscate data. Lookup fields are bad. They are a crutch for people too lazy or too unknowledgeable to write a query. Lookups belong on Forms (or reports) not on tables. And for the same reason, I never format fields at the table level when that formatting could hide data. For example, formatting a date field to show only the date and not the time could easily impede problem resolution if someone made the mistake of using Now() rather than Date() to put a date into the field. If your query uses "=", that date with the time will never compare equal and unless you remember you formatted the table, you'll spin your wheels looking for the bug because you won't know that some, but not all, records include a time component.
John, So you're quite OK with two customers named John Tsioumpris, one good one bad both being reported as paying late? That's the kind of stuff that happens when you obfuscate data. Lookup fields are bad. They are a crutch for people too lazy or too unknowledgeable to write a query. Lookups belong on Forms (or reports) not on tables. And for the same reason, I never format fields at the table level when that formatting could hide data. For example, formatting a date field to show only the date and not the time could easily impede problem resolution if someone made the mistake of using Now() rather than Date() to put a date into the field. If your query uses "=", that date with the time will never compare equal and unless you remember you formatted the table, you'll spin your wheels looking for the bug because you won't know that some, but not all, records include a time component.
ASKER
Pat that makes a lot of sense. Lookups surely should not be used at table level. John I also see the point in making it more readable but as you say it would be nice to see both pieces of data