funny thing. i have managed to avoid access for all but perhaps exporting data (which is not really using access). i mean... i have used it. written a query or two. perhaps a lame report. but i have never used access.
things changed today. i was helping a new co-worker out. telling her she didn't have to print so much paper. turns out she had printed a stack of forms that were to be manually filled out by folks in the field offices. and she was going to store them for use later.
so onto the change. i got her started by showing her a couple of things. she created a worksheet type table. she input some data. she even modified a query to pull back data.
i looked her form over during our staff meeting, and figured out how her data needed to be broken up. i got back to my desk and fired up access. i am using 2003, and it has some pretty neat features.
table.field:
input mask - i found that access has an input mask that allows you to define what is allowed as input. this was great for phone numbers, employee numbers, a FIRMS code (A123) etc.
caption - now i thought this was pretty neat. you define your field name, ramp_loc in my case, and you add a caption of Ramp Location. now when i build a form or report Ramp Location is in the header instead of ramp_loc. this is very nice if you are going to be using access as the front gui (although i am sure there is a way to get this as meta for use in any application).
using access as a database is not bad. but i have always dreaded writing an interface in access. since this is being used for 1 person, i figured i would kick the tires (this is for a new employee who has never used access before and is not a programmer). the first form i made i just ran the wizard and viola. everything was pretty neat.
and then i had to go and get all complicated. i know what i want to do and i am about 75% there. of course at this time tomorrow, i could have built the entire thing using a web language, but hey... it's another tool in the toolbox.... right?
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
css and xhtml
i've been interested in both css and xhtml for some time now. the majority of my work is in reporting, and it hasn't led to much work with either. my current project is refactoring an exisitng application. i decided while i am having to dig into the view of this application to improve error handling, that i would remove all styling and place it into a css file. i have enjoyed doing this. it has been pretty simple, but fun none the less.
this even lent itself asking advice from chris coyier at css-tricks.com. i wasn't really sure what to expect, but he responded to my email. it appeared that he spent more than 5 minutes in his response as well. pretty cool. i guess that just goes to show that he's a cool cat.
so with the styling taken care of, i made sure that the only thing left was xhtml compliant. well, this is true for the part of the view i was working in. since there is other code in the rest of the template, and i haven't attacked the template yet, i've still got some work. at this point though, i've got several div's, some tables, some links and some breaks. pretty compliant. everything is in lowercase.
well.. not everything. here is what i think is funny. xhtml states that all tags and attributes are to be in lowercase. since xhtml is strict and case sensitive, it is important. what i find so humourous though is the doctype declaration. one of the following three must be used:
notice all of the capital letters? i just find it humorous.
this even lent itself asking advice from chris coyier at css-tricks.com. i wasn't really sure what to expect, but he responded to my email. it appeared that he spent more than 5 minutes in his response as well. pretty cool. i guess that just goes to show that he's a cool cat.
so with the styling taken care of, i made sure that the only thing left was xhtml compliant. well, this is true for the part of the view i was working in. since there is other code in the rest of the template, and i haven't attacked the template yet, i've still got some work. at this point though, i've got several div's, some tables, some links and some breaks. pretty compliant. everything is in lowercase.
well.. not everything. here is what i think is funny. xhtml states that all tags and attributes are to be in lowercase. since xhtml is strict and case sensitive, it is important. what i find so humourous though is the doctype declaration. one of the following three must be used:
< !DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
< !DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
< !DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
notice all of the capital letters? i just find it humorous.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
About
This is the space where I intend to post about my application development work.
My current development work is in ColdFusion 7 and Oracle 10g.
This will most likely be a blog full of links and notes on my subjects of interest which include ColdFusion, Oracle, MS SQL Server, scalability, automation, testing, building, version control, and basic how to's for beginners.
I am sure this will evolve throughout, but these are my current objectives.
My current development work is in ColdFusion 7 and Oracle 10g.
This will most likely be a blog full of links and notes on my subjects of interest which include ColdFusion, Oracle, MS SQL Server, scalability, automation, testing, building, version control, and basic how to's for beginners.
I am sure this will evolve throughout, but these are my current objectives.
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