Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Databases Before Tea Bad...

The last couple of nights I've been modifying away on one of the databases I manage. It's an Access database and while "real" designers scoff at that, keep in mind for many people it's software they already own and it feels comfortable to them. I'd love to take some classes and get better at "real" design, especially mySQL. Yes, I know mySQL is learnable at home but I need deadlines and someone making me responsible for the actual learning process. Otherwise, the rest of life kicks in and there's a lot of it to contend with.

But requested updates were made and uploaded and then at 8:50, an hour when I was conscious (kind of) but not lucid (at all) my cell rang. Rats. If my cell rings on my morning off and it's one of about 3 numbers, that's not a good sign. And it wasn't.

I created a new table last night and built a half dozen forms and modified a few reports based on that table. All pretty straightforward and normal. But for whatever reason, Access, when it chose to go to sleep last night-- deleted the table. The forms were there, the reports were still modified. The table was gone. I know the table was there and working--because I double checked the forms and whatnot before I uploaded.

Not realizing this caused some panic because the database was randomly shutting whenever we tried to filter a form. Finally I saw the sub-form linked to the new table not showing up and tada, fixed in five minutes. Thank heavens my Managing Editor is incredibly patient.

So where exactly did the table go? I'm guessing the never never world of socks the dryer ate. Grrrrr. There are days, this being one of them, I swear this program gets PMS. What's the software version of chocolate?

Also...I should be learning Drupal.

1 comment:

Ruth said...

Gotta say, Hedgie, I like Drupal a LOT more than I like building crap in Access... have a big task to do that early this year and I've so been putting it off!

Just wait... the never-never land of dryer socks and Access tables will spit your table back into the db at a very inconvenient time...