Thank you for you consideration and frankness.

I apologize if what I am doing is considered misuse of this thread. First of
all, I am not the "developer" in question. I am an employee of a non-profit
agency, with limited.funds I started to pick up some programming on my own
to meet a need. I admit the database I created was a hack job and a quick
fix to solve a problem. I did a quick fix because we already had this
consultant working on integrating 3 areas of our organization. I couldn't
wait until he finished working on the entire project so I got some books and
tried to come up with a short term solution. I did come up with a working
solution that works great. I knew nothing about programming prior to this,
so I never questioned anything the "developer" told us. It wasn't until I
made the request stated in this thread that I even looked at his code.

My intention is to ask questions to learn for myself. I have been checking
out the tech sites to find out what I can. In my database I did all the
code myself from what I picked up from books and tech sites except for the
requery code also listed in this thread. I asked for help with that after
struggling with it for several weeks. Everything else in the database worked.
I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with what I did (in 4 months) so I
thought it would be ok to ask for help. The only reason I asked for help on
this was because the "developer" is very arrogant and condescending. Since I
am not allowed to say anything, I thought I could put him in his place
without saying anything. Sorry for wanting to be that way but I am so
frustrated with the whole situation. I would change his design to eliminate
the problem (I still would like to know how to do it since I spent so much
time trying to figure it out). Unfortunately, I am not allowed to do that,
at least not until after the project is done.

Now for the politics. Unfortunately, we can not "fire" him because we are
not paying him. He is being paid from a grant from somewhere else. Another
political problem is that we have a new director who is afraid of looking bad.
After I voiced my concerns about the database, the director met with the
"developer" and the agency involved with the funding to discuss my concerns.
I was not invited to the meeting. even though this "developer" throws around
alot of techincal terms and tries to intimidate anyone who questions him.
The reason the new director is afraid of looking bad is that we are too far
in the project. The feelings are it is too late to do anything now. We
should have said something sooner. Problem was initially I was intimidated
by him and I didn't know any better. The grant money is considerably less
than what programmers would normally less. The old saying you get what you
pay for. Still, that doesn't make it right.

The worst part of this is that he is designing a model to be used for other
non-profits. That makes me sick. Most of the non-profits like us do not
have any technical people. So since this guy talks a good talk, my fear is
everyone will buy into it and he will go around designing crap for everyone
else. Our director is getting irritated with me because I won't let it go.
We plan on cutting our losses and taking whatever he gives us and tweaking it.
The problem is nothing is said about his end product and he gets to go around
to the other nonprofits. I probably should not have said all this in an open
thread, but I don't care because I don't think it is right. I would have
responded directly to you with a zip file of the database (since it is a test
version there are no confidentially issues) but I do not know your email.
After reading all this, I am not sure if you still would want to. If you
think I should not seek help here, I will understand,



Larry Daugherty wrote:
You're trying to solve your political problems with technical
solutions to specific incompetencies on the part of your current
"developer". Continuing to come back to these newsgroups to
compensate for someone else's "sins" is a departure from the purpose
of them. We try to help the *developer* with technical issues to
resolve those particular issues - one issue per thread.

You are coming back for a "bank shot", If it is gratified I suspect
that there will be others...

I suggest that you try a different approach: At those meetings loudly
propose that the developer in trouble visit the list of Access
newsgroups that you provide him on the spot. I'd follow that up with
an email that lists at least this newsgroup and as many others as you
like. Just about any technical issue with Access can be resolved by
some responder here. Alternatively, the developer might discover that
what s/he wants to do can't be done with Access.

If you can determine the signature that the developer uses in the
newsgroups then you can monitor what is actually asked and the
responses received.

To resolve the political issues you have to use the tools at hand to
resolve them at the political level. Here's something scary to
consider; while it's not a given, people who are totally incompetent
using the higher level tools provided by Access usually haven't
bothered to learn about Relational Database Management Systems. That
implies that the schema on which s/he is trying to build functionality
is incorrect. If s/he asks questions that are particularly jarring
there will be requests for his schema to be included in a response.
It's my guess that his schema is badly flawed and that his thread will
end with no response. A very pertinent question to ask in a meeting
or via email is: "Is our database normalized to at least 3rd Normal
Form"? A qualified "Yes" might be sufficient. There are instances
where 3NF is departed for good reason. S/he should at least know what
it means.

Here is a burning question: Are you that developer? If so, come out
from behind cover and post your issues directly. We're not the Access
cops.

If and when you post back, please include a paragraph or two
explaining what your application is all about, Also, list your
schema: all of your table names and the names and datatypes of every
field in each table.

In addition you may send a zip file to my address that has the
application description and a populated copy of your application in
Access 2003 or earlier. I can look it over and give you some feedback
not just on the schema but on the higher levels of functionality as
well. I'll treat your data as confidential,

HTH
I wrote in Dec. 07 regarding a consultant with suspect programming skills
(majority of programming done with macros and multiple examples of empty code)
[quoted text clipped - 33 lines]

Thank you for your consideration and any feedback

http://www.accessmonster.com/Uwe/For...esign/200801/1

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