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Oguz and cfsearching,
Let's take an example. The software I'm developing is a way of viewing a
variety of survey results. Any one of 12 people may be the one doing a bulk
load of these results (as they don't want to directly link to the survey
software quite yet, and they "fiddle" with the results a little to standardize
them/clean them). Some of the results have over 256 characters (which, if not
within the first 8 rows in a normal MS SQL import, will either error or cut off
the data, even if the field is defined as text 16 field, or the data is
imported to a temp table - yes, I've done this too many times. Can you tell?).
Each of these surveys will have different numbers of questions, different
kinds of results, yadda yadda. You know, what you'd expect.
What I'm hearing you say is that I should make an Access database on the
server that mimics my MS SQL database, then give them each an excel file for
their local machine that links to the Access database, then have the Access
database link to MS SQL?
That makes me nervous. These people are like any other non-technical people,
and prone to mistakes. Mistakes that could break my front-end. Not to mention
that maintaining this as development continues (as it does - unfortunately not
in clean-cut phases) would be annoying. But, perhaps you mean something else?
My current (probably flawed) plan is to put the bulk of the work in my cfcs.
This will make things slower, of course, but I'm thinking the benefits outweigh
the speed issue. I feel that I have more control over the data this way, and
can give user-friendly errors. I can kick back certain items to be fixed, but
continue processing the rest of the file, for instance.
Now, if I've completely misunderstood what you've said, or am simply going
about things the wrong way, please let me know. This is my first time
developing this type of functionality, and I trust that y'all have more
experience with it than me. So, please enlighten me!
Best wishes,
Cat
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