On 27 Feb 2002 at 2:59, kelly_s_53222 wrote:

> To the forum:
>
> Our company wants me to set up a database to track failure history of
> products by serial number and other fields. We currently are using
> Interbase for our main database.
>
> The guy who constructed our main database used Borland Delphi to
> create the client for it. I have access to Borland Delphi
> Professional 5, but have extremely limited experience with it.
>
> My other option is to use Microsoft Access with the Easysoft 6 ODBC
> driver as a client. There are about 11 tables that I have set up.
> The main table contains the customer information, serial number of
> unit and customer described problem. The primary key is an integer
> that I have set up a generator and trigger for (auto increment).
>
> I have other tables that deal with the details of the analysis of
> these units. They each have a foriegn key that links back to the
> primary key of the main table mentioned in previous paragraph. For
> instance, if my given unit has to have four parts replaced, I have a
> table for replaced parts and supplier info that has the foreign key to
> tell me which serial number unit the parts were replaced on.
>
> I tried to use Access to set up a form and subform, but apparently the
> foreign key relationships that I set up using IB Expert to configure
> the Interbase database are not recognized by Access. It doesn't make
> a whole lot of sense to declare these relationships in both Access and
> Interbase. Has anyone dealt with this type of problem successfully?
> Is anyone out there familiar with using the Easysoft driver with
> Access to get desired results?

Realise that Access is really the wrong tool for the job, your much better off using
Delphi or Visual Basic, or my favourite C/C++. This is because Access is designed
to use Access data, as a desktop database. Interbase is a client/server database,
which means that the size of the datastore has a much higher capacity. Access
has a working capacity of about 10,000 - 25,000 records across all tables.

The best way to learn a new tool (like Delphi) is to develop something with it, to
make life easier, pick up a copy of IBObjects (www.ibobjects.com), and skip Access
and ODBC unless you really, really need it, or you like torturing yourself.

Paul
Paul Schmidt
Tricat Technologies
paul@...
www.tricattechnologies.com