Exam Database

[Emily]

Hi, I am setting up a database of exam questions in
Access 2000. The exams cover different topics and come
from a number of different contributors. I have set up
the following tables:
Questions: Picture (which is an OLE object, if I can
figure that out), Clinical Vignette (if one is included),
Question, Answer 1, Answer 1 percent, Answer 2, Answer 2
percent, etc up to answer 10 (these are multiple choice
tests, and the correct answer will have 100 in the
percent field), category (from Category Table),
Contributor (from Contributor table, and fields for dates
the questions have been used previously.

Category

Contributor

I want to do several things. First of all, I want to be
able to generate paper exams for individual
classes/categories taking into consideration the last
time the question was used. I can write a macro that
will run a query and output the data into a RTF document,
but the formatting doesn't really make me happy. If I
use an Access Report, It doesn't look good either.

I also want to set up online practice quizzes.(Access
2000 will work online, right?) I have a data access page
set up - Is there any way to write a macro that will
display one message if the answer is correct and another
if the answer is wrong. (a simple if..then else?) I was
thinking of either using buttons or check boxes.

I would appreciate any ideas or help anyone would throw
my way. I may be complicating a simple project
unneccesarily. I'm sorry if any of the questions seem
silly, but this is my first big project.
Thanks!

 

[Pavel Romashkin]

The first thing that comes to my mind is that you should remove the
answers from the Questions table and create a separate Answers table.
Let each Answer have a unique AnswerID. Create a FK in it called
QuestionID so that you know which Answers are related to which Question.
This way you will not be tied to have 10 answers, and writing a query on
the Questions table will not require you to list 10 fields in it.
I am not sure what exactly you disliked about using Access reports
because I haven't yet faced a task that reports would net be able to
address one way or another. What is it that didn't work for you?
Online quizzes... I suppose you can do that. I will not be of help here
(using Access DAPs) though because I can't make myself write something
for online use that is totally platform dependent, and not just that -
requires certain libraries installations on client machines even under
Windows. But if you have the luxury of knowing that you will be only
offering these to properly maintained client PCs, I'd say this is the
simplest (although not the fastest) way of doing this.
This is only my opinion - I'd be glad to hear others chime in with a
more optimistic view of DAPs.
Pavel