Verification of Changes 1

[HMJ]

Is there a way to verify that a user wants to change information?

We have a situation where some information is being changed - by mistake - and nobody will admit to doing it, much less admitting to being in the record. (I know - this NEVER happened before!)

What I would like to do is make it so that ANY TIME information is changed, the user has to verify that the change is okay. It would help if we could also pick up the user ID from the network, and store that data when changes are made.

The biggest problem is probably the fact that we are only using network security on the database. We tried to use MS Access security but it was a disaster and after about five tries we gave up.

THANKS.
Anyone able to help us.

Harry Jessen
HMJessen@Yahoo.com

 

[BNPMike]

Many database applications record a timestamp and the id of the last person to update the record, within each record. You may sometimes have to maintain an audit trail ie separate tables of all changes. One way of doing this is to always add new records and make the application work off the latest version. You can then view previous 'versions' and fall-back in case of corruption etc.

If you've ever used a Vax, you will remember everytime you edited a file, the operating system would keep a copy of the previous version. Same idea.

Just some of the many little complications that turn simple initial ideas into the horrible messes of the real application world.

 

[HMJ]

TO: BNPMike

That sounds interesting, but I am NOT a pro at this by any means. Could I obtain more details? The only problem I see is the multiple "versions" of a record. How would you assign the versions or know what the latest was?

I am using a single frontend that access multiple backends and multiple tables within each backend. Would your idea work in this instance?

THANKS.


Harry Jessen
HMJessen@Yahoo.com

 

[BNPMike]

I was just trying to give you some moral support. I'm not aware of an easy way to solve your problem. My suggestions involve some, or a lot of, re-programming.

I guess I would try and solve the problem by persuading people not to corrupt the database.

If you need this kind of tracking long term then it may be worth looking at a different dbms eg MSDE or MySQL where their journals/logs might capture user information.