Creating a table that is menu driven within the table.

[Teri Murray]

I have used Panorama database for about 14 years. If any
access user has used Panorama before, is there a way to
set up Access the same as you would work in Panorama?

Would like to discuss this issue further.

teri

 

[John Vinson]

I have used Panorama database for about 14 years. If any
access user has used Panorama before, is there a way to
set up Access the same as you would work in Panorama?

I'm not familiar with Panorama, but... Access and Panorama ARE
DIFFERENT PROGRAMS. Access is not a flawed implementation of Panorama;
it has its own groundrules and ways of working. It may be worthwhile
exploring Access in its native guise to see if it can accomplish the
users' needs. New is not necessarily evil!

That said, if you use appropriate Forms with whatever VBA code you
need, it's *very* flexible; the user interface can be made to look
pretty much however you like, given enough programming effort.

 

[John Nurick]

Hi Teri,

It's not possible to just set up Access so it works just like Panorama.
The two programs have very different histories and take very different
approaches to managing, querying and displaying data. I get the
impression that Panorama makes quite a lot of small things simpler than
Access does, while Access is far more powerful and configurable in the
long run.

One big difference is that Access (like most database systems)
automatically saves changes to disk, while Panorama normally works only
in RAM and doesn't save changes until it's told to. Another is that
Access is inherently a fully relational multi-user system, while
Panorama is inherently flat-file, single-user with (to judge from the
maker's website), no concepts of "normalization" or "relational
integrity".

As John V said, it's best to work to the strengths of whatever software
you are using. This is especially true when it comes to designing the
data structure (for instance, you'd replace repeating fields in a
Panorama database with a related table in Access). But when it comes to
the user interface it will (with some effort) be possible to create
something that users of the corresponding Panorama database will find
easy to pick up.