Question Boy said:
I know you say not to update info into simply because it can require
updating
tons of tables, but does this apply to only inputting client info (name,
address, tel number) and not financial.
How do you know the above is in fact the case? How do you know when you add
a new vendor or client, that a whole chart of accounts and a bunch of other
things are not created in other files all over throughout the application?
How will you know what next autonumber (whoops, come to think of it I don't
think simply counting use as the auto numbers, and they have their own
custom built in internal number generation system that is rather complex).
So, how can you even assign the primary key to the reocrd you plan to add to
this table?
In a good number of my applications, I actually have a series of tables with
fields that hold the next primary key number that I'm going to generate for
a given table new customer. (this is especially the case one is gonna be an
external number that users use, as they need to be kept separate from
internal primary keys).
Who knows what approach and what numbering systems that simply accouting ses
to generate this new accout, or client number? As I said, in theory it
sounds wonderful to simply insert a record into a table, in actual practice
you'll have to take the millions of dollars of code that was spent on
designing and building simply accounting, and you have to now duplicate that
code that they used to insert that reocrd. Do you know what other tables
you'll have to access to get that next vendor or client number assigned?
As I said, the problem is not inserting a record, the problem is finding out
what mechanisms they used to assign the primary key and set up all the other
55 plus tables that that application uses. You don't know how all this works
in simply, and your placing yourself in a situation like a intern in a
hospital ward, and you're telling me it's no problem to do brain surgery at
all, where's the knife? Unfortunately we can't let that intern out of
ignorance simply go in there and start chopping open people's brains because
they think it's simple and easy. To make the assumption that is gonna be
trivial and easy task is ONLY somthing that a inexperienced deveoper going
to make, not somone in our software industry trying to build a soltion for a
customer.
I am simply looking to create the
client contact record. The actual financial information... will all still
be
done directly through simply. I am simply looking to eliminate the
duplication of client information data entry. I'm sorry if your previous
post applied to this case as well, but I just wanted to be explicit about
my
specific case should you have experience with this in particular.
What you said does not change one thing at all.
As I said, you're free now to open and take a look at the tables in simply
with MS access. (it going to take you less time to do that then to write
your post!!! it is possbile that simply uses the standard autonumber field
for the primary key, but I don't think that's what simply uses. They using
custom code that pull the numbers from another table, and then they
increment the value in that table and save it. They then add the
client/vendor reocrd, and then use that new number they just created from
those toher tables as the primary key.
You're probably far better off going to the simply a counting support people
and newsgroups, as I can only speculate here. As I said, directly modifying
the tables is possbile, but it going to be more difficult to add a new
reocrd, especially when you have to assign those internal account numbers
and IDs to that record.
Perahps the best choice is to check if simply supports object automation.
Aautomation is the same thing we do in MS access when we launch outlook, or
words from access, and then have an application do or execute commands that
we want. It's quite easy in MS access to launch a copy of outlook, and at a
new contact to the contacts database. However, to directly modify the
outlook tables is a very difficult task, because we would have to be aware
of all kinds of minor details such as how is the primary key an auto number
generated for this record.
Automnation is your best choice here (if available), and perhaps a second
choice would be the text export/import idea. The last idea would be to try
to add the record directly to the simply tables by opening them via
ms-access.
