We had four problems/questions that we dealt with at this meeting:

(1) What is the relationship between Access and Visual Basic? Access includes a subset of Visual Basic called Access Basic which is used to write Access Modules. Also both Access and Visual Basic use the same database engine. One way of looking at it is that Access is designed for End Users like managers, comptrollers, accounting clerks, etc to enter, retrieve, and update data in a database, and Visual Basic is designed for programmers to develop application programs that others can use to do those same functions. People interested in Visual Basic should consider coming to the Visual Basic Sig which meets on the first Tuesday of each month in room M8 of Keplinger Hall.

(2) How can one bring in an update file and delete records from the main file only if there is not a corresponding record in the update file, update any records for which there is a match, and add any records that were not there earlier. The solution was to write three queries, an Update Query, a Delete Query, and an Append Query, and Jenny showed how to write all three, and then bring them all together in a macro that imported the update file and ran all three queries.

(3) How do you import a Lotus123 Spreadsheet with calculations. This question was posed by someone that had their Access spreadsheet with them, but not the Lotus Spreadsheet file, so we postponed this question until next month, at which time she will bring both files.

(4) Can one update an Access Database over the Internet, and have a separate password for each record? The Front Page extensions for updating an Access Database work best if the database is on an NT Server (there are attempts at Front Page interfaces for Unix Servers, but they don't work as well, and the database would have to be converted to something that will work on Unix). One could always require one of the fields on the update record to be a code word for that record, and let the update code running on the server refuse to update the record unless that update code matched the appropriate code on the database.

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