Dear Ken:
A "Request for Comment" (RFC) eh?
Partition: the division of a set into subsets that span the original
set but which do not intersect. (my own, off the cuff definition)
Span: to include every element
Intersect: have an element in common
If there is some partition of all the rows in a table into a subset
which the user does not want to see, and another that is to be seen,
this can easily be done with a column in that table, perhaps a boolean
(yes/no). But that assumes that ALL users partition the table
identically.
If each user has a potentially different partitioning of the table,
this could be done with a local table on each user's computer.
However, it some times happens that a user are not always on their own
computer when they work. Also, when this happens, each user would
probably expect his partitioning to follow him, not to be forced to
use some other user's partitioning just because he's on that user's
computer.
So, I would place a table of users in the shared database and create a
junction (many-to-many relationship) between this table and the table
of users, setting the partitioning for each user. Each user could log
in to the database and then see only his own partitioning.
I've tried to cover this in some depth but with relatively few words.
I don't know how much of this is applicable to your situation, and may
have erred on the side of providing too much information. But that's
the nature of an RFC response in my experience.
Building the query on this basis would be fairly straight forward.
Tom Ellison
Microsoft Access MVP
Ellison Enterprises - Your One Stop IT Experts
