"Rick Brandt" <ri*********@hotmail.com> wrote in
news:ta****************@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com :
My point though is the "typical user" might very well say..."This
is okay in Access 12 so I guess it's also okay in older versions".
They'll have no idea that Access is doing thing properly under
the covers. In their eyes they are simply putting multiple values
into a field. I suppose it's not too bad if the interface for
setting it up makes it clear that you are doing something
"special" to give a field that capability.
I thought there was something in Rucker's article that said it would
be a special interface for these fields, He says:
In a single table you could only assign an issue to one person,
and Access would provide a simple bound drop down list of
people to Assign to. With Complex data, you can (still looking
at a single table) assign the issue to several people at the
same time, and Access provides a drop down check list with the
ability to select several people.
Now, so far as I know, we don't yet have a "drop down check list"
control available to us in any version of Access (without, perhaps,
some Stephen Lebans-style extensions), so this sounds like a new UI
control designed for this particular kind of data.
Now, I don't know what this means for datasheets, for instance. I
don't know if you'll be able to manually edit the list like you can,
say, Outlook categories, or if there will be some other mechanism
for it. As I said, whether or not I think it's ultimately a good
thing depends on excatly how they implement it.
As to users taking Access 12 expectations back to earlier versions
of Access, I think this is a relatively minor consideration. How
many people who are novice Access users will:
1. start learning Access only with version 12, AND
2. use these multi-value fields, AND
3. also, after learning Access with version 12, then start working
with earlier versions of Access.
Seems pretty far-fetched to me, and could involve only a very small
number of Access users.
Even if it were a greater temptation, I still don't think preventing
the unknowledgable from making mistakes is a good criterion for
eliminating potentially useful features from Access. I don't really
know if it will be useful to me or not, but I don't think that fear
of misuse is a very good reason for dismissing it before we've even
seen it.
--
David W. Fenton
http://www.bway.net/~dfenton
dfenton at bway dot net
http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc