I have a SQL Server as backend and use ms access as frontend.
I have two tables (persons and managers), manager is derived from persons (a 1:1 relation), thus i created a view managersFull which is basically a:
SELECT *
FROM `managers` `m`
INNER JOIN `persons` `p`
ON `m`.`id` = `p`.`id`
id in persons is autoincrementing and the primary key, id in managers is the primary key and a foreign key, referencing persons.id
now i want to be able to insert a new dataset with a form in ms access, but i can’t get it to work. no error message, no status line, nothing. the new rows aren’t inserted, and i have to press escape to cancel my changes to get back to design view in ms access.
i’m talking about a managers form and i want to be able to enter manager AND person information at the same time in a single form
my question is now: is it possible what i want to do here? if not, is there a “simple” workaround using after insert triggers or some lines of vba code?
thanks in advance
The problem is that your view is across several tables. If you access multiple tables you could update or insert in only one of them.
Please also check the MSDN for more detailed information on restrictions and on proper strategies for view updates
Assuming ODBC, some things to consider:
make sure you have a timestamp field in the person table, and that it is returned in your managers view. You also probably need the real PK of the person table in the manager view (I'm assuming your view takes the FK used for the self-join and aliases it as the ID field -- I wouldn't do that myself, as it is confusing. Instead, I'd use the real foreign key name in the managers view, and let the PK stand on its own with its real name).
try the Jet/ACE-specific DISTINCTROW predicate in your recordsource. With Jet/ACE back ends, this often makes it possible to insert into both tables when it's otherwise impossible. I don't know for certain if Jet will be smart enough to tell SQL Server to do the right thing, though.
if neither of those things works, change your form to use a recordsource based on your person table, and use a combo box based on the managers view as the control with which you edit the record to relate the person to a manager.
Ilya Kochetov pointed out that you can only update one table, but the work-around would be to apply the updates to the fields on one table and then the other. This solution assumes that the only access you have to these two tables is through this view and that you are not allowed to create a stored procedure to take care of this.
To model and maintain two related tables in access you don’t use a query or view that is a join of both tables. What you do is use a main form, and drop in a sub-form that is based on the child table. If the link master and child setting in the sub-form is set correctly, then you not need to write any code and access will insert the person’s id in the link field.
So, don’t use a joined table here. Simply use a form + sub-form setup and you be able to edit and maintain the data and the data in the related child table.
This means you base the form on the table, and not a view. And you base the sub-form on the child table. So, don't use a view here.
Related
I am looking for help with database design for a small project I am working on.
In short what I am trying to achieve is to have say the following tables:
Paddocks
Paddock ID
Paddock Name
Paddock Size
etc.
Cattle
Herd ID
Herd Name
Number of cows
Current Paddock
Cattle_Movements
Herd Name
Current Paddock
New Paddock
Date
etc.
I was hoping to have the 'Cattle_Movements' table be like a summary of all movements of a herd of cattle. And when a herd is moved from one paddock to another it would update the 'Current Paddock' field in the 'Cattle' table.
At this stage I am trying to workout the relationships, queries and high level process that I will need to implement.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Start by setting up a normalized table structure. make the tables below and hook them together with the relationships tool on the ribbon under database tools-relationships. To create a relationship drag the primary key from one table to the corresponding and same named foreign key in the table that will be the many side of the relationship. In the pop up make sure to check the enforce referential integrity, cascade update, and cascade delete checkboxes.
I've highlighted the two "Many to Many Relationships" in this normalization. HerdsPaddocks is a more generic name for the CattleMovements Table. There are other possible normalized table structures, but the subtle differences are beyond the scope of this answer. When you are ready, look up table normalization and Many to Many Relationships.
Next, Close the Relationships tool, select a table from the sidebar and on the ribbon under Create hit create form. Do this for all the tables. Now we have a working database but you need to learn how to use it. So play!
Below I gave some play suggestions, but just play with everything until you figure out how to use the forms to (add, search, edit) cows, herds, and paddocks. Also learn why you should delete the primary keys from all the forms and how to replace the foreign keys like CattleType in the Cattle Table with the user friendly CattleTypeDesscription from the CattleTypes Table.
Start with the Herds table and enter some random herds. (pro tip: never add data to the table directly except when playing the error rate is too high). Then Open the herds form where you can browse and edit the herds.
Play tips: In the Table Herds HerdID is both an autonumber and a primary key. It behaves differently from the other columns. Check it out. after that delete the HerdID textbox from the form and see what happens(a good thing). How do you add herds using the Herds Form?
Moving on to playing with the Cattle form, first make sure to add a few CattleTypes to the CattleTypes table. Then at some point, try replacing the CattleTypeID in the Cattle Form with the CattleTypeDescription: https://btabdevelopment.com/how-to-change-a-text-box-to-a-combo-box-wont-work-with-data-access-page/
Also, note the Cattle Form has a subform allowing you to simultaneously assign/edit cattle assignments to herds.
Once you are comfortable adding and editing data, play with the query editor. For instance, to get how many cows are currently in Paddock holds10cattle (my dummy data).
query 1 showing the relevant data
results from query1:
Query 2 getting really close:
Query 3: which gives the number 2:
'Query 3 SQL from SQL pane of query designer
SELECT Count(Cattle.CowName) AS CountOfCowName
FROM Paddocks INNER JOIN ((Herds INNER JOIN (Cattle INNER JOIN CattleHerds ON Cattle.CattleID = CattleHerds.CattleID) ON Herds.HerdID = CattleHerds.HerdID) INNER JOIN HerdsPaddocks ON Herds.HerdID = HerdsPaddocks.HerdID) ON Paddocks.PaddockID = HerdsPaddocks.PaddockID
GROUP BY Herds.HerdName, Paddocks.PaddockName, HerdsPaddocks.HerdPaddockEndDate, HerdsPaddocks.HerdPaddockStartDate
HAVING (((Paddocks.PaddockName)="holds10cattle") AND ((HerdsPaddocks.HerdPaddockEndDate) Is Null) AND ((HerdsPaddocks.HerdPaddockStartDate)<Now()))
ORDER BY HerdsPaddocks.HerdPaddockStartDate;
Next Steps could include the specific paddock with a parameter and using the query in a report.
I'm trying to think of the easiest way for non-tech users to dump info into a database, without coding my own web application.
Essentially, they are recording subjective phone grading scores for employees.
I linked an Access form to our MS SQL Server database. The only validation I want it -- I want one field, 'employee' - to be validated against a list of employees from say table.employee on SQL Server.
Once the form is submitted it will be written to table.scorecard -- or what have you.
Is this possible in Access? Their standard validation rules don't seem to cover this. Also, is there simply a better way to accomplish this task in general? Thanks
There are two ways to solve this problem.
The simplest is to use a combobox field for your employee information. Use the employee table as the list data source for the combobox and then set the LimitToList property to true. This assumes that you have setup linked table connections for both your employee table and your 'scores' table.
The second solution is to create a foreign key between the employeeId (or whatever the key field is) in the scores table and the employee table on the SQL side. If someone tries to insert an invalid employee, you will get an insert error. Unfortunately, SQL errors tend to be very confusing to most Access users.
If you want to be very through, you could implement both solutions, this would prevent someone going straight to the linked tables and putting in bad data.
I just realized that I am assuming that you are doing proper relational design where the 'scores' table would contain the employeeId rather than a full name. The idea on the form is to have the combobox display the name, but insert the employeeid field.
I'm currently solving this task: some data should be sent from AdventureWorks2012 to Anchor model tables on the same server in MsSQL.
This is my Anchor Model
At this point I have a pretty simple Integration Services project in Visual Studio and it looks like this.
Control flow:
For example Load_territories is:
The main requirement is to fill all tables of Anchor model tables in MsSQL but I'm constantly facing a problem: the amount of attributes in tables are different and some of them are repeating
At this picture in the second table basically TR_ID,TR_GRP_TR_ID, TR_TID_TR_ID, TR_TNM_TR_ID contain the same values from dwh_key but it's impossible to create a one-to-many relation between attributes. My tutor has recommended me to use Lookup but I cannot figure out how to implement them in this project
This may be considered as cheating, but if you insert data into the latest view rather than the separate 6NF tables all of those ID fields will be populated by underlying trigger logic. I suspect that this would defeat the purpose of using SSIS though, since you would effectively be loading attributes sequentially rather than in parallel.
Another option is to leave surrogate key management to the ETL tool. This would require that you switch the data type for your identities from integers to GUID:s. SSIS can then generate a GUID and you can then use that very same GUID to populate all the attributes. Note that the anchor would have to be loaded first, or you will get a foreign key violation.
The most common solution though, is to leave surrogate key management to the database (and use integers). You would have a step in which you populate the metadata column in the anchor with the desired number of new identities to be created. Using the metadata number you can then select the newly generated identities and merge them into your data flow. It doesn't matter which number gets assigned to which row. After that all attributes can be populated in parallel, including their ID columns.
Of course, if this is intended to be used for more than an initial load, you would also have to add steps to detect if the data you are loading is already known or not.
I can also recommend watching the video tutorial referenced in this blog post: https://clinthuijbers.wordpress.com/2013/06/14/ssis-anchor-modeling-example-tutorial/
In sql server we can Update data view.I think the concept of view is a read only table.
Why we can edit view in sql.is there possible in oracle?
To answer your question of why can we create an editable view, it is so that you can limit access to fields that you do not want updated (or viewed). Then you can give a user access to the view, but not to the underlying tables
For a simple example, you could have a personnel table. You could create an view allowing some users to update a field like emergency contact details, but not see or update bank details or salary
There are lots of criteria to meet to make a view updatable, and you can indeed use INSTEAD OF triggers for extended functionality http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187956.aspx
I think the concept of view is a read only table
No, it's more of a virtual table - anywhere you have a real table, you ought to be able to replace it with a view, and the users should be none the wiser.
According to Codd:
Rule 6: The view updating rule:
All views that are theoretically updatable must be updatable by the system.
However, in practicality, this ideal has not been achievable.
In addition to what #JamieA wrote, views can not only limit access to fields, but also limit access to data in the table.
Look at simple SQL-Fiddle example and experiment with it.
The view in the example restrict access only to columns id,val1 of the table, but also restrics access to rows (only id = 2..10). You can update and delete only rows 2..10 throught the view.
However the view does not prevent insertion of a row with id = 20
Here is another example - a view with check option - it this case the view prevents not only deletes and updates, but prevent also inserting rows that do not match a where clause of the view.
#yogi wrote that we can't update a view if the view joins two tables -> here is a third demo that shows a simple view that joins two tables, and how an update of this view works.
These simple examples are for Oracle, but after small modifications should also work in MS-SQL (must change datatypes in create tables), since when i looked througs MSDN documentation (section: updatable views -> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187956.aspx), I didn't find any significant differences between ms-sql and oracle, it seems that views work similary on both databases.
Yes it is possible in Oracle, the other answers already explained why views are updatable and had shed some light on that question, they are also allowed in Oracle but have some restrictions/limitations here is the Oracle documentation
Like, the view select cant have: aggregate functions, distinct clause, group by... read the link for more info
Since views are read only tables and its doesn't support DML statements you can't perform update on view.
An interesting factor is there you can write update statemnt over view and write a instead of trigger for that hence you can perform multiple update statements on tables which are in the view.
According to Pinal Dev Views having following limitations
ORDER BY Does Not Work.
Adding Column is Expensive by Joining Table Outside View
Index Created on View not Used Often
SELECT * and Adding Column Issue in View
COUNT(*) Not Allowed but COUNT_BIG(*) Allowed
UNION Not Allowed but OR Allowed in Index View
Cross Database Queries Not Allowed in Indexed View
Outer Join Not Allowed in Indexed Views
SELF JOIN Not Allowed in Indexed View
Keywords View Definition Must Not Contain for Indexed View
View Over the View Not Possible with Index View
I have many tables in my database which are interrelated. I have a table (table one) which has had data inserted and the id auto increments. Once that row has an ID i want to insert this into a table (table three) with another set of ID's which comes from a form(this data will also be going into a table, so it could from from that table), the same form as the data which went into the first table came from.
The two ID's together make the primary key of the third table.
How can I do this, its to show that more than one ID is joined to a single ID for something else.
Thanks.
You can't do that through a trigger as the trigger only has available to it the data that you already inserted not data that is currenlty only residing in your user interface.
Normally how you handle this situation is that you write a stored proc that inserts the meeting, returns the id value (using scope_identity() in SQL Server, but I'm sure other databases would have method to return the auto-generated id as well). Then you would use that value to insert to the other table with the other values you need for that table. You would of course want to wrap the whole thing in a transaction.
I think you can probably do what you're describing (just write the INSERTs to table 3) in the table 1 trigger) but you'll have to put the additional info for the table 3 rows into your table 1 row, which isn't very smart.
I can't see why you would do that instead of writing the INSERTs in your code, where someone reading it can see what's happening.
The trouble with triggers is that they make it easy to hide business logic in the database. I think (and I believe I'm in the majority here) that it's easier to understand, manage, maintain and generally all-round deal with an application where all the business rules exist in the same general area.
There are reasons to use triggers (for propagating denormalised values, for example) just as there are reasons for useing stored procedures. I'm going to assert that they are largely related to performance-critical areas. Or should be.