Renaming Stuff

The fifth in an occasional series of rants by Chris Shepherd

So another day begins at the office and a new document arrives on your desk. What's this you look with interest to see that it is - Wow new coding standards. Your heart sinks as you realise you should have named tblTableName as T_TableName.  So what's the problem - just rename it and you are sorted.

Now here is where Access, as per usual, deviates from the real world.  Once you rename an object all the dependant objects (Querys,reports,forms) still point to the previous name.  Now you are the proud developer of one very broken Access System!

At this point the old hands are say "Yeah well it has advantages because you can do...".  The point is this behaviour does not fit the users mental model for how things should work.  After all  - they renamed the building I work in the other week, but the building stayed where it exactly where it had always been. In Life a thing is what it is, even if it's name changes.  A possible exception to this is when a women gets married and changes her name. Then she should stay the same person  - but it's not guaranteed. :)

Things descend into farce when you have code & macros referencing these object as well.  You can spend hours tracking down the changes.

Do yourself a favour surf over to http://www.rickworld.com/ and try Rick Fishers Excellent Find and Replace.  Then come back to me and tell me that your life has improved.  If you like it - buy it....Rick deserves the money!

If you have any comments about this article or would like to suggest other niggles with Access please drop me a line at Contact Chris

Chris Shepherd is an MCSD working for an Investment Bank in the UK and can usually be found listening to any album by Matchbox 20.