Hello everyone. I have a dilemma that has bugging me for few months now, and I have decided to finally try something radical to solve it and could use your advice.

BACKGROUND: Most of my database front-ends typically wind up with the same layout -- a main (parent) data entry form that has a tab control with multiple tabs on it and each tab has a sub-form (child). These subforms typically hold historic data or multiple instances to their parent. Sometimes they are the "Junction Table" in a Many-to-Many. A likely example would be a Customer (parent) form with OrderDetails, AddressHistory, OrderHistory, ActivityHistory, etc subforms (children).

PROBLEM: While I love the ease and quickness of Access when developing, I have come to really despise "BOUND" forms and all that goes along with them. Yes, they have advantages, but the reality is they also have many shortcomings and furthermore no client/server database would ever use them (e.g. Oracle, Sysbase, and even SQL Server).

QUESTION: Could someone please explain to me - based on the above example - how you could build a parent form with a tab-control and several subforms and be able to make it UNBOUND??

So far i have ubound control on my main form which works find but i just don't know how to link my subform now.


Would someone please offer some wisdom and help here? It would be greatly appreciated!!!



Skharva

You can use a subform and not make it bound. Use an ADO recordset and pass a textbox value as a parameter and populate it only when needed. Try not to use too many tabbed subforms. If you must use them, use stored procedures if you have SQL Server as a back end. If you are using Access as the back end for the data, you do not have much choice on what to do. Many to Many relationships kill not only your application, but your network as well because you end up bringing every record for every table that you use in every query.

Unfortunatly, using many to many relationships is the only way to capture business in many instances, but planning your front end with graceful degradation can help increase performance.

Make sure to use your indexes properly and also do not use too many auto numbers as the primary key. Use smart primary keys so htat you can decrease the number of joins in your queries.





Sal