Preventing records from being accidently deleted

[Guest]

We have had two different databases and the same problem has occured in both
of them. Suddenly we start losing records. On the current database 92 records
disappeared suddenly. These are just random records over a 3 month period
with no correlation.

I'm not sure how this occured but would like to lock the delete function so
that if a query could not accidently delete records and they cannot be
deleted manually.

Is is almost as if we have a virus, but I know we don't because this is a
huge corporation with a large IT department.

 

[Guest]

Is is almost as if we have a virus, but I know we don't because this is a

huge corporation with a large IT department.

Ha! Microsoft is a huge corporation with quite an impressive IT department
and their products are constantly attacked by viruses.

Still I doubt that it's a virus. More likely users. How do you know that
these records are missing? If you can compare the tables to a backup of the
database, fair enough. If users are telling you that records are "missing",
that's a different matter. First of all users lie. Second of all users lie.
The records may not have ever been entered in the first place or they (as you
seem to think) deleted them.

Next you must go to the tables and check. Often records seem to be missing
in queries due to inner joins between tables and one table doesn't have a
matching record.

To prevent users from deleting records, you need user-level security. Then
you can stop users from deleting records. In fact you can create a Yes/No
field named something like Active in all your tables and change the value to
No instead of deleting the record. Then run most queries where Active = Yes
as criteria.

 

['69 Camaro]

Hi.

We have had two different databases and the same problem has occured in
both
of them. Suddenly we start losing records.

When this happens to multiple database applications, it's usually due to one
of two things:

1.) A user opens a query and either deletes records he doesn't need to
concern himself with or updates existing records, because he thinks he's
working with a copy of the data, instead of the live data. Oops.

2.) The tables aren't normalized correctly and/or the code deletes the
wrong things because the database developer is inexperienced.

If it's only happening to one database application, database corruption may
be the cause, but corruption usually doesn't happen to multiple database
applications at the same time unless there's a flaky network involved. I
seriously doubt you have a flaky network if you're working at a huge
corporation with a large IT deparment.

I'm not sure how this occured but would like to lock the delete function
so
that if a query could not accidently delete records and they cannot be
deleted manually.

The only way to do that reliably in an Access database is to implement
User-Level Security and remove the Delete Data permission on the tables.
Otherwise, consider upgrading to a client/server database and have the DBA
not grant delete permissions to the users on these tables.

HTH.
Gunny

See http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips and tutorials.
Blogs: http://DataDevilDog.BlogSpot.com http://DatabaseTips.BlogSpot.com
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com/html/expert_contributors2.html for contact
info.

 

['69 Camaro]

Hi.

For more information on implementing User-Level Security, please see the
following Web page for the Security FAQ:

http://support.microsoft.com/?id=207793

Study it and practice on a copy of your database a few times.

HTH.
Gunny

See http://www.QBuilt.com for all your database needs.
See http://www.Access.QBuilt.com for Microsoft Access tips and tutorials.
Blogs: http://DataDevilDog.BlogSpot.com http://DatabaseTips.BlogSpot.com
http://www.Access.QBuilt.com/html/expert_contributors2.html for contact
info.