B
BiigJiim
Hi,
I am writing an application in Access 2003 which involves a live ticketing system. There are 3 or 4 terminals which each have a main screen showing live up-to-date information on a number of active tickets. The screen is continually refreshed.
Each ticket has several pieces of information, such as name, ticket number,start time, car registration, price etc. which need to be displayed, usingdifferent colours, font sizes etc. Some are text fields, some are just Yes/No inidicators etc. e.g. the Status of each ticket is shown using background colour. Up to 25 tickets can be displayed at a time on the screen.
Because the application is optimised for touchscreen, where the user needs to touch a ticket to go to the next screen, the tickets are not laid out intabular format, but are at present clusters of controls laid out in a 5x5 grid. As each ticket 'cluster' has about 10 controls (some of which overlap), this means 250+ controls on the form. The controls are all unbound, and are populated and displayed using vba and a recordset.
As I have vb6 I am considering creating an activex control to represent each ticket, replacing the cluster of controls. Each control would have several properties to store and display each piece of ticket information. Each control would only need one event - on_click.
The idea is to simplify the Access form (25 controls instead of 250) and the vba code (e.g. if only 15 tickets exist, I only have to hide 10 active x controls rather than loop through the clusters of controls currently.) There are also 4 different screens which have to display ticket information, sohaving a single activex control would standardise things.
However I have never created an active x control for Access. Is this a BAD idea or not? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Would it have an impact on performance? Any insight would be VERY much appreciated.
Thank you,
Jim
I am writing an application in Access 2003 which involves a live ticketing system. There are 3 or 4 terminals which each have a main screen showing live up-to-date information on a number of active tickets. The screen is continually refreshed.
Each ticket has several pieces of information, such as name, ticket number,start time, car registration, price etc. which need to be displayed, usingdifferent colours, font sizes etc. Some are text fields, some are just Yes/No inidicators etc. e.g. the Status of each ticket is shown using background colour. Up to 25 tickets can be displayed at a time on the screen.
Because the application is optimised for touchscreen, where the user needs to touch a ticket to go to the next screen, the tickets are not laid out intabular format, but are at present clusters of controls laid out in a 5x5 grid. As each ticket 'cluster' has about 10 controls (some of which overlap), this means 250+ controls on the form. The controls are all unbound, and are populated and displayed using vba and a recordset.
As I have vb6 I am considering creating an activex control to represent each ticket, replacing the cluster of controls. Each control would have several properties to store and display each piece of ticket information. Each control would only need one event - on_click.
The idea is to simplify the Access form (25 controls instead of 250) and the vba code (e.g. if only 15 tickets exist, I only have to hide 10 active x controls rather than loop through the clusters of controls currently.) There are also 4 different screens which have to display ticket information, sohaving a single activex control would standardise things.
However I have never created an active x control for Access. Is this a BAD idea or not? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Would it have an impact on performance? Any insight would be VERY much appreciated.
Thank you,
Jim