All,

Thanks for all your helpful posts to this group. I wanted to ask your
design advice before I go too far down the wrong path...

I have a fairly extensive contact application in Access 2003, using a
tabbed interface and one or more subforms on each tab. Additional
related subsidiary information for each contact is displayed in popup
forms called by command buttons on the tabs/subforms.

What I want to do is create a display of some summary data that acts
as a sort of dashboard for the underlying info. I envision this being
a set of unbound controls indicating, for example, Yes, this person
has comments, or Total number of comments = 7 (giving the user some
key info, and what other data is available to drill-down on).

So, I figure I can do each as a Dlookup domain aggregate function, or,
create a series of small "group-by" queries, pull those results
together in a sort of "parent" query, and use that as the record
source for another subform? However, I am sure there may be a better
approach that I'm not aware of...do you have any suggestions for
what's the best way to do this with the least performance hit?

Thanks for any input.

Ralph

Ralph wrote:

Totals (group by) queries will be faster than Dlookups.

Hi Ralf,

Just out of curiosity, what do you use for a table design? I would
have thought that using a fairly simply relational model you could
avoid all sort of lookup issues and just use joins - nice and quick.
If you have a subform that shows the 'lookup' (or better related data)
with a combobox or listbox listing the possible notes available
wouldnt that be quicker and also more intuitive? User selects an
option from the combo / listbox and the related record(s) are shown in
a textbox or whatever control is appropriate. I only ask because
DLOOKUP is hideously slow, and since it seems like you have a good
grasp of forms you could probably manage a subform with not much
hassle. Just a thought.

Cheers

The Frog