Re: Hard to explain - multiple update fields query...

I started with a local copy of the linked table to work from. I have the 40
append queries dumping the ID, Award,AwardDate,NumberAwarded and
AwardPrecedence into a separate temp table. Everything looks good so far.

Starting the Update piece from the temp table to the local table, I've hit a
snag. There are 300 awards in the Precedence Table I used to populate the
temp table (this field was originally a 3 char text field - 001-300...I
converted to a Integer instead - 1-300).

A particular ID could have awards with precedences of 10, 27, 156, 201..etc.
And these could be scattered thru the table in the various 1-40 fields.

How would I change the WHERE clause in the update piece to grab the lowest
precedence for that SSN? Then once the Award1 fields are populated, how would
the subsequent Updates look like...to grab the next higher precedence and so
on...until there are no more awards for the particular ID to worry about?

UPDATE AwardsTable as A INNER JOIN TempTable as T
ON A.ID = T.ID
SET A.Award1 = [T].[Award]
, A.Award1Date = [T].[AwardDate]
, A.NumberAwarded1 = [T].[NumberAwarded]
WHERE T.AwardPrecedence = ?

"John Spencer" wrote:

For some reason my response got truncated. You would use an update
query to get the data back into the AwardsTable

UPDATE AwardsTable as A INNER JOIN TempTable as T
ON A.ID = T.ID
SET A.Award1 = [T].[Award]
, A.Award1Date = [T].[AwardDate]
, A.NumberAwarded1 = [T].[NumberAwarded]
WHERE T.AwardPrecedence = 1

Repeat the above for each precedence level changing the set of fields
you update. For instance, for the 17th set you would see something like:

UPDATE AwardsTable as A INNER JOIN TempTable as T
ON A.ID = T.ID
SET A.Award17 = [T].[Award]
, A.Award17Date = [T].[AwardDate]
, A.NumberAwarded17 = [T].[NumberAwarded]
WHERE T.AwardPrecedence = 17

If you were paranoid and the structure allowed it, you might just add
new records with all the data and then when you were satisfied that all
went correctly, delete the old one.

Another option, would be to build a parallel structure of the
AwardsTable in your Access database and do all the work there. Once you
were confident that the process worked you could either update all 40
sets at once from the Access table or import the entire set of records
at once.

Of course this entire solution depends on you being able to lock the
AwardsTable for data entry for the entire period you need to do the work.


'====================================================
John Spencer
Access MVP 2002-2005, 2007-2008
The Hilltop Institute
University of Maryland Baltimore County
'====================================================


John Spencer wrote:
Ok, then try restructuring the data into a table you create in your
Access database. Data structure - field and tables names - are all
generic guesses.

Fields:
ID
Award
AwardDate
NumberAwarded
AwardPrecedence

You will need 40 queries to populate the table from your current table.

INSERT INTO TempTable (ID, Award, AwardDate,NumberAwarded, Precedence)
SELECT ID, Award1
, Award1Date, NumberAwarded1
, AwardsPrecedenceTable.Precedence
FROM [AWARDsTable] Left JOIN AwardsPrecedenceTable
ON AwardsTable.Award = AwardsPrecedenceTable.Award
WHERE Award1 is Not Null

Now you have the data normalized and can shove it back into your
original table. Perhaps cleaning out the 40 sets of fields first using
an update query to set all the fields in the set to null and then using
an update query to populate the sets.

You could do one set at a time if you wish. Clear out set 1 and
populate it, clear out set 2 and populate it.


STEP 1: BACKUP your data before attempting the following.
STEP 2: BACKUP your data before attempting the following.

Without a backup you cannot restore the data if this does not work the
way you expect.

.

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