Shared Data Types

[oldblindpew]

I'm anticipating something like this:

PERSONS
PersonID
Person fields...

REQUESTS
RequestID
RequestDescription
RequestType

RESPONSES
ResponseID
RequestID
PersonID
Response

I expect the Responses to be Numbers, Currency, or Yes/No, however, all
responses go in the same field, which can have only one data type. I have
set aside the RequestType field as some sort of flag to indicate the kind of
response expected for each request.

Question: Which data type should I use for the Response field? It seems
like Number would work, but an example I've seen used Text.

Bonus Question: Is there a preferred way (sample code?) to make use of the
RequestType to convert the Response into the correct value of the correct
type?

Thanks,
OldBlindPew

 

[Jeff Boyce]

If I recall correctly, Duane H. did something like this in his At Your
Survey database/application:

http://www.rogersaccesslibrary.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=3

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Access MVP

--
Disclaimer: This author may have received products and services mentioned
in this post. Mention and/or description of a product or service herein
does not constitute endorsement thereof.

Any code or pseudocode included in this post is offered "as is", with no
guarantee as to suitability.

You can thank the FTC of the USA for making this disclaimer
possible/necessary.

 

[Steve]

Numbers, Currency, and Yes/No can all be numbers. Obviously currency is a
number with a leading dollar sign. If you look at what is stored in a Yes/No
field, you will see -1 for Yes and 0 for No. So when you display Response in
a form or report, all you need do is format the response value
appropriately.

Steve
(e-mail address removed)

 

[oldblindpew]

Yes, that's the example I've been studying. He uses Text for his response
field data type, and I was hoping to flush out a reply on why one might
prefer Text over Number, even if Number seems a more likely candidate. Also,
he does have a field for QuestionType, but so far I have not found any way
for the user to access that field when creating a survey question!

Thanks,
OBP

 

[Steve]

Did you look at my response?

Steve

Yes, that's the example I've been studying. He uses Text for his response
field data type, and I was hoping to flush out a reply on why one might
prefer Text over Number, even if Number seems a more likely candidate.
Also,
he does have a field for QuestionType, but so far I have not found any way
for the user to access that field when creating a survey question!

Thanks,
OBP

 

[Duane Hookom]

If you only intend to store numeric values then you might want to use a
numeric field. If you choose to use a text field, you can convert it to
numeric using Val().

Duane Hookom
MS Access MVP

 

[Piet Linden]

Yes, that's the example I've been studying.  He uses Text for his response
field data type, and I was hoping to flush out a reply on why one might
prefer Text over Number, even if Number seems a more likely candidate.  Also,
he does have a field for QuestionType, but so far I have not found any way
for the user to access that field when creating a survey question!

Thanks,
OBP  

Really simple. You can store almost anything in a text field and then
use conversion functions to convert to another datatype. e.g. CInt
([MyTextField]) If you wanted it to be relatively painless, you could
store the intended type in a table somewhere, or in the Question
table...