"You're a lawyer, man, spend some money on a freelance coder!"
Yeah, yeah . . . I guess I should expect a few lawyer jokes gettin'
into somethin' like this. Believe you ME, there's nothing I would
RATHER do than hire someone to code this for me. I'm, unfortunately, a
prosecutor, so I've got no more of a slush fund to develop my case
tracking database than the guy who drives me to work on the bus has to
develop his mileage database (in fact, my bosses wanna know why I do
this on a computer at ALL . . . they keep track of everything on INDEX
cards!)
"All you're tracking is a case number, court date and adjourn date?"
I'm not trying to be cryptic at all. I'm just trying to keep the issue
I'm addressing clear. Yes, of course I'm tracking other stuff--I'm
tracking all SORTS of other stuff.
The table that this PARTICULAR form is based on, though, is tracking
the amount of time that case has been charged against the defendant's
speedy trial rights. In other words, there's another field in the
previously described form called "Time Charged." When I enter the
Court Date and the Adjourn Date, Access automatically suggests that the
ENTIRE duration between the two dates is Time Charged as a default and
I can then edit that time period if the judge has given me a particular
allowance for some of the time to NOT be charged against the
prosecution (if, for example, the defense attorney requested the
adjournment).
I've then got a separate form that queries all the adjournments for
that Case Number and returns the sum of the number of days entered in
the Time Charged fields associated with the adjournments.
"What happens when it's a brand new case number and there's no previous
record for it?"
Well, then that field stays blank. Or, if it's easier, Access inserts
whatever it wants in that field 'cause I'm going to have to go in and
tell it what the first court date is anyway.
What I'm ESPECIALLY trying to accomplish here is a process for
calculating how much Speedy Trial time has been charged for cases that
have been around for a while. So I'm looking at a file that has
ALREADY been to court seven times. The way I'm completing the form
now, it's working like this:
*new record*
Court Date: A
Adjourn Date: B
Time Charged: x
*new record*
Court Date: B
Adjourn Date: C
Time Charged: y
*new record*
Court Date: C
Adjourn Date: D
Time Charged: z
(and so on . . . ). It just seems to me that if I've already TOLD
access that "B" is going to be the next Court Date, it's repetitive for
me to go and type that AGAIN.
"Is there more to the database?"
Oh yeah . . . let's get this little issue sorted out, though, and THEN
I'll hi-cha up for help on all the other little . . . *issues* (for a
sneak peak at another little som'in-som'in, though, feel free to check
out:
http://groups.google.com/group/micr...6152531db25/29d4796235ea00fa#29d4796235ea00fa
)
Help = AWESOME!
Thanks!