What do you use instead of lookup fields?

[Guest]

Ok, I'm seriously a new user, and I've seen several disparaging comments
about using lookup fields. They seem to be anathema to the power users. So,
what do you do instead of using a lookup field? And if I have a whole bunch
of forms and tables with lookup fields already, am I doomed to inefficiency
forever? Is there a book or a self-help group I could join? (Wait, you guys
are my self-help group). If I could just get a little summary on why lookup
fields are bad and what the alternatives are, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!

 

[Guest]

I use lookup fields, what's the problem? They work great for my application.

Everything depends on your needs/purpose. What is your database for? What
are the lookup field used for (lookup what exactly? You talk about
inefficiency, do you have performance issue with your database? or is this
simply based on comments that you have read?

Daniel

 

[John W. Vinson]

Ok, I'm seriously a new user, and I've seen several disparaging comments
about using lookup fields. They seem to be anathema to the power users. So,
what do you do instead of using a lookup field? And if I have a whole bunch
of forms and tables with lookup fields already, am I doomed to inefficiency
forever? Is there a book or a self-help group I could join? (Wait, you guys
are my self-help group). If I could just get a little summary on why lookup
fields are bad and what the alternatives are, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks!

There is NOTHING wrong with using Lookups.

Combo boxes on Forms are very powerful, very useful, and perfectly
normal.

If you check into the various arguments against lookup fields, you'll
see that they pretty uniformly make this point - and that they are
opposed to using lookup fields IN TABLES.

Using Lookup Fields in tables does *one* good thing: it makes it a
couple of mouseclicks easier to put a Combo Box on a Form.

But the Lookup Wizard makes you pay for this one small benefit with a
host of disadvantages; not the least of these is that it conceals the
actual contents of your table from view, and leads you into confusion
about what's actually there and how to create queries based on your
table.

If you're using table datasheets for routine interaction with data,
that's another problem with Lookup Fields - they make it easier to do
so, which is a misuse of Tables. Tables should be used to store data;
Forms are the better tool to update and view that data.

John W. Vinson [MVP]