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Sesame Library | Field Types and Data Entry - Q&A vs. Sesame
One of the principal differences between Sesame
and Q&A will be apparent as soon as you design your first database or
import a Q&A database into Sesame. In Q&A, certain field types
are "loosely" defined. For example, in date fields you can enter a valid
date - or anything else you want. In the latter case, Q&A will give you a
warning message that it can't reformat the entry to a valid date, but will
allow you to keep it if you want. Likewise, in a Speedy-Unique field, Q&A
will let you enter a non-unique value simply by overriding the
warning. The same thing in time fields.
In Sesame this won't be the
case. Date fields will accept only entries that are recognizable (or can
be reformatted) as valid dates; unique fields will accept only unique
values; and time fields will accept only valid times of day. You might
feel that such "tight" restrictions are a step backwards. We feel it's the
right way to go. Here's why.
If you force "September 00" into a date
field in Q&A, you have just rendered that record invalid whenever that
date field is used in a Retrieve Spec for a record search, report, or the
like. In other words, if you then search for all your invoices dated
August 1, 2000 or later, the "September 00" record will not be included.
Since it's an invalid date format, Q&A can't find it. The same holds true
for time fields.
If you force duplicate unique field
entries and that field is used as the external key value in an XLookup
from another database, Q&A is liable to retrieve information from a record
other than the one you want. Q&A will retrieve the information from the
first matching record it finds, and since the record order can
vary from use to use, you can't be sure which record Q&A will find first.
The Sesame team feels that data
integrity is far more important than the ability to enter data
haphazardly. In Sesame, if you need a field where you can store
anything, simply define the field type as "text" rather than "date" or
"time" and Sesame will let you enter whatever you want.
(See Also
Getting Your Q&A
Data in Good Shape for Sesame)
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