table column headers on forms

[doco]

I have as is quite common, several tables that have fields which will be a
name commonly used throughout. EG. Size, Qty, Units, Etc.

My practice is to give each field name a prefix that is a reflection of the
table it is in. EG. land_size, land_units, etc. Then putting "size",
"units", etc in the caption attribute. The problem begins when making forms
of those tables; you wind up with the actual field names and not the
captions. It's a real pain to the go and change the form field names to the
intended caption display names.

Is there a workaround for this?

TIA

 

[Allen Browne]

If you set the Caption property of each field in the table, the form/report
will use that caption for attached labels.

Whether that's a good idea or not is problaby open to debate.

 

[Tim Ferguson]

I have as is quite common, several tables that have fields which will
be a name commonly used throughout. EG. Size, Qty, Units, Etc.

My practice is to give each field name a prefix that is a reflection
of the table it is in. EG. land_size, land_units, etc.

Why? I am not aware of any restriction that says that column names have to
be unique across a database; only within the table. To me, it makes perfect
sense to display the synonymy between Houses.Width and Fields.Width and
Stores.Qty and Ordered.Qty and so on. It's a pointless search for making
your field names more obscure, and it's only going to make the job harder
for people trying to draw up queries or maintain the tables themselves.
Nobody else cares what the fields are called and database itself certainly
doesn't.

Just a thought


Tim F