Interested in learning about multi-valued fields?

Check out Microsoft's latest addition to MS Access, described in A Guide to Multivalued Fields

What a great idea!

Thanks to Bill Reynaldos for finding the link.

- Bob

Hmm… I wonder if this could be useful. Could we perhaps mirror our MV data to an Access 2007 database using its ODBC driver for reporting needs?

Access supporting MV data implies there will be reporting tools that are MV aware too.

Interesting.

Jim,

Access supporting MV data implies there will be reporting tools that are MV aware too.

Technically Access isn't supporting MV data, just MV presentation of the data. They do some smoke and mirrors in the background to still store the data relationally.

[email protected]

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

The net result is the same, even if the backend implementation is ugly. It is a mainstream Microsoft product effectively endorsing Multivalues. Wish it great success.

I have always maintained that the differences between "them" and "us" is really just packaging… and that their DBA'a have to work alot harder.

The net result is the same, even if the backend implementation is ugly. It is a mainstream Microsoft product effectively endorsing Multivalues. Wish it great success.

There are two different issues here. The net result is the same from a public relations point of view. If MV style presentation takes off with a mainstream product then this only helps us.

But you were suggesting that if Access supports MV then their reporting toolset would also support MV as well. I was simply pointing out that the reporting toolset doesn't have to change because the data is still relational. In this sense, it won't help us at all.

[email protected]

SRP Computer Solutions, Inc.

Well, the articles I was reading described the data as being physically stored in hidden system files, so I was assuming it wouldn't still be accessible in the 'usual' way of relational databases. But who knows.

They have seen the need to do two things:

1) Support this kind of data.

2) Do so in a way that hides the tedious mess involved in doing it with a flat database.

I also noticed that they showed how thw SQL language would accommodate this with a .Value property:

SELECT Issues.Title,

Issues.AssignedTo

FROM Issues;

Thus becomes…

SELECT Issues.Title,

Issues.AssignedTo.Value

FROM Issues;

This looks to me like they have codified an MV syntax for SQL.

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