[thelist] Access Tip

[Seth Bienek - Web Consultant]

<tip type="Making working with Access less sucky">

Stuck doing database work in Access?

You poor bastard.

Here's a tidbit to hopefully make your work life a little less unpleasant:

You can get a nifty chart of the tables and fields you are working with, and
their relationships, rather easily..  Here's the step-by-step:

1.) Open your database in access, Click on the 'Tools' menu, then select the
'Relationships' menu item.  Choose the tables you want to document (you can
add more later by right-clicking), and drag-and-drop the related PK/FK
fields.  Don't select "enforce referential integrity" unless you know what
it's for and know that you want to use it (I don't reccommend it).  You can
drag your tables around and lay out your database map to look all purty.

2.) If you're using Access97 you're probably thinking "Yeah, but I can't
print it!"  If you're using Access2000, you can print it, but you wouldn't
want to; it will look like shite, and it probably won't fit on the page.
Instead, maximize the 'Relationships' window, then do a screen capture (In
Windows, 'Alt + Print Screen').

3.)  Now that you've got it in your clipboard, jump into your image editing
program (I'm using Photoshop in this example).

4.)  Click 'File', then 'New'.  Photoshop will give you the new file
dialogue box, with the dimensions of your scren capture all filled out!  All
you have to do is hit 'Enter' or click 'ok'.  Now hit 'Ctrl' + 'V' to paste
the screen capture into the new document window

5.)  The Select Box tool should be... uh... selected, by default.  Drag a
select box around your database map, then click "Image" from the file menu,
then select the "Crop" menu item.  Voila'!  You have your database map.
Let's clean it up and print it.

6.) Select the 'Image' menu item, click 'mode', then 'Greyscale'.  This will
cut down on the size of the document you'll be sending to the printer, and
will help with our next step.

7.) Select the "Magic Wand" tool (right column, second from the top on the
'tools' toolbar), and click on the grey background of the database map.  Hit
the 'delete' key.  Your grey background will be removed.  This is a good
thing.

8.) Let's fit this baby to our paper size;   Choose 'Image' from the file
menu, then select the 'Image Size' menu item.  Change the resolution to 300
(for a smoother apearrance), then adjust the width OR height size to fit
your page.  I use 7.5 for the width if the diagram is taller, or select 10
and print it landscape if the diagram is wider.

That's it!   Now you have a nifty database map to tape up in your cube so
you can see your fieldnames/relationships at a glance, and you can save the
image file you created for versioning purposes as well.  The process might
seem involved, but the it only takes a few seconds after you do it a couple
of times.  

</tip>

Happy Coding,

Seth 

------------------------------------
Seth Bienek
Independent ColdFusion Developer