With just one reply back so far and I am already delighted I asked the
question. Dennis's mail asks a question which is fundamental to the whole
issue and introduces my preferred choice for a once a day live link up. (PC
Anywhere)
Heated discussions have been about why time should be spent on the day the
BusDev's visits the office, when he has the DB with him all the time. I
have been trying to make the extreme difficulties understood.
Dennis's reply is just what I wanted to hear because
the more I have thought about this the worse it gets and I see no perfect
solutions for a fully automated update from the laptop for the following
reasons.
When we go Multi-User, the Base DB will always be current in terms of the 2
Base users but the laptop will be based on data up to 1 week old.. I see 3
issues
major issues:
1. Any number of new clients could be uploaded. - Not a problem, but it is
possible that because an urgent letter/quotation had to go out, the client
details were passed by phone to Base and the new client being uploaded could
already exist on the Base DB.
This is unimportant ONLY IF both sets of data are exactly the same.
Otherwise it demands a human decision with possibly some manual editing of
the Base data.
2. Amended data for any client will be uploaded from the laptop. However,
on the Base DB, different columns of data for the same client could have
been amended.
In other words, both Base DB data and uploaded data
changes are valid and both must be kept.
3. The amendments could be duplicates and the uploaded data should be
ignored.
I have designed the database so that Clients can only be deleted if they are
unwanted and have no linked data in any of the other tables.
For example, if a Quotation/Tender/Invoice/Payment (and certain other links)
exist, they cannot be deleted. But to overcome large listings of unwanted
data, I have introduced column clStatus (Current, Moved,Closed...) and users
always have a choice over which Status they search on/select allowing data
sets to be limited. (Client) Contacts also have a cnStatus and similar
rules apply.
David Atkinson
skidbusters.co.uk
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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