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MS Access Forum / General 1 / January 2007Bug in Access?
I have some text fields in several linked SQL Server 2000 tables that intermittantly have either a zero length string placed in the field or a null value. My desire is to have null values when there isn't any data entered into the field from an Access 2003 form (Access 2000 file format is what we are using however.) I checked the link itself and it has "AllowZeroLength" by default set to Yes and "Required" by default set to No (I have not modified any properties of the link.) According to MS documentation, this is what I want (even though the user could still type "" to force an empty string.) I know without a shadow of a doubt the user doesn't know how to do this and for simplicity I leave the link untouched with the default settings. The fields themselves are all varchar data types, with "Allow Nulls" checked in the table designer of the Enterprise Manager, and default values not present. Two things in my mind could be the reason, I either only "think" the user doesn't know how to enter "" to get an empty string or its bugged. Could anyone please shed some light on this for me? I am totally baffled. You rarely ever would want to allow both null and ZLS in the same field, especially if they kind-of mean the same thing. In SQL Server it's easy to put a Check Constraint to avoid the problem. The Access link information doesn't mean much to me; I would exclusively look at what the SQL Server table allows. How you got ZLS in your field is anyone's guess, not knowing your app. One possibility is that the user enters <space>, which Access in its infinite wisdom may truncate to a ZLS. -Tom. >I have some text fields in several linked SQL Server 2000 tables that >intermittantly have either a zero length string placed in the field or [quoted text clipped - 15 lines] >bugged. Could anyone please shed some light on this for me? I am >totally baffled. >How you got ZLS in your field is anyone's guess, not knowing your app. >One possibility is that the user enters <space>, which Access in its >infinite wisdom may truncate to a ZLS. I suspected that too, recalling how often users will "empty" a cell in Excel by hitting the spacebar and then wonder why it doesn't act like an empty cell. However, Access itself doesn't convert ' ' to ''. I opened a SQL server linked table in spreadsheet view, typed a space and saved the record, and the column was <NULL> when I checked it on the SQL server. It is possible that some bound controls may behave differently, I suppose.... > You rarely ever would want to allow both null and ZLS in the same > field, especially if they kind-of mean the same thing. In SQL Server [quoted text clipped - 28 lines] > >bugged. Could anyone please shed some light on this for me? I am > >totally baffled. |
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