How does a "Form handler" work?

[jjdoro]

I have several online forms used by about 6 different departments that feed their results into the same database table (Access database). Some departments have a slightly different form so some of their results will go into a different field than others. Would this create any conflicts and what if per chance two people submit a form at the same time then what happens? I believe there is something called a forms handler on the server that puts them in a que but I'm not sure?

2. There's a lot of data to be collected and many questions that feed into this table. Is there a limit on the number of fields you can have?

 

[byam]

1. It all depends on the implementation of your business logic. In general, if all your form is just inserting entry to the database, not changing existing data, then there will be no concurrency issue and no conflict. However, if the forms are changing data in the database, then you have to make sure the only one form submission is handled at any one time (e.g. a common form handler which control all these related form updated).

2. In general, if the form method is a 'post', then there should be any limit on number of fields. For 'get' method, there is a limit on the length of the URL, thus limiting the number of characters for the fields name and values to be put in the query string of the URL. I thinks the character limit is 1024 or something like that.

 

[jjdoro]

Thanks Byam, these are all new entries to the database and no existing data will be changed so I think I am okay on that.
For the other thing about the max number of fields I don't work on the server so am not sure if we use "Post" or "Get" but I found this site

http://www.databasezone.com/techdocs/acclimit.html

that says 255 fields is max fields for an Access database. Wouldn't those limits apply to any Access database even one that is part of a website?

 

[jjdoro]

I should clarify that to 255 fields in one single table
i.e.
Table specifications
Attribute Maximum
Number of characters in a table name 64
Number of characters in a field name 64
Number of fields in a table 255
Number of open tables 2048. The actual number may be less because of tables open internally by Microsoft Access.
Table size 1 gigabyte

 

[byam]

When the form is submitted, if you see all the field appear in the URL, then the form method is a get. Otherwise it is a post.

255 field for a table is a lot. if a table has more than 255 fields, you may want to thinks about is the database schema is properly designed.

Also I haven't see your database schema, and don't know how your tables/fields map to the forms. One form data may apply to more than one table, (e.g. user data goes to user table, user order may goes to another table, etc..)