Use of Classes

[JimS]

I'm reading Cooper and Tucker's Expert Access 2007 Programming. My eyes have
been opened about the use of Classes in A2007. I created one for
authentication and am about to implement it. It's a good application for the
concept, I think.

My question is one of philosophy...how do you identify those "things" that
are good candidates to implement as classes. Obviously, you can go too far.
If you instantiate a class every time you need some rows from a table, the
overhead would seem to way outweigh the simplicity. Also, is it better to
instantiate the class in a "Public" object variable at application startup
(as I do for my authenticate class, since it is used at least once in every
on_open event for each form...) or instantiate it when needed, ignoring the
startup overhead? Strategies for deciding?

Thanks guys.

 

[Albert D. Kallal]

I talk about when it is a good idea to use a class object here:

http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Articles/WhyClass.html

And, really great use of a class object is the one I built for managing the
ribbon in 2007. You can read my article here on that one:
http://www.members.shaw.ca/AlbertKallal/Ribbon/ribbon.htm

So, trying to store data in a class object don't help much, but for code
that needs to manipulate a LOT of variables with some data...they can be
ideal....

 

[JimS]

I'll read through your citation. Thanks alot.

BTW, I downloaded and printed the MSDN article on customizing the 2007
Office Fluent Ribbon for Developers. So far, it's a disappointment. Seems
really complex to create the xml and when I tried the examples in my play
area, I got varying unexpected results... like there were things I shoulda
known but didn't. I see the ribbon as a significant opportunity to clean up
my older interface, but I'm frankly scared to continue.

I also downloaded a RibbonClass from your website, but it appears (though
I've just glanced through it so far) to manage an already-created ribbon set.
It's the initial creation I'm scared of....

Again, thanks!