Microsoft Access Status

General

Displaying status messages is important for giving the user a visual feedback for the current process.

There are different types of feedback that are prone to gain user attention. The status service distributes the status change to all these types, namely the Status Bar and the status interface (which is used by the status form, for example).

Terms

Task

A task represents a multitude of steps.

Step

A step is an operation executed in the frontend.

Model

Status

The status class has three main objects, the current task and the two registered status facilities

<uml class style="plain" scale="75" direction="lr"> [Status]1-1>[Task] [Status]1-1>[<<IStatus>>;Bar] [Status]1-1>[<<IStatus>>;Interface] </uml>

The main methods allow to start and end a task, to set its size and to reset it as well as to update the status with a message text.

<uml class style="plain" scale="75"> [Status|+Task;-Bar;+Interface|+startTask();+setSize();+update();+endTask();+reset()] </uml>

Methods

startTask

Starting a task sets the name of the task. It is possible to start sub tasks during the execution of a task.

getStatus.startTask strTask:="My Task"

setSize

If the extent of a task is known, the user can set the size of a task to the amount of all steps included in the task. If a size is set, the status messages will contain progress information.

getStatus.setSize lngSize:=100

update

A task is executed by executing a multitude of steps. The status is updated whenever a step is executed or a progress is made.

getStatus.update strText:="Step"

If a step has not the default weight, the user might specify a different count like

getStatus.update strText:="Step", lngCount:=12

endTask

After a task has successfully been executed, it needs to be ended. Ending a task displays a summary and removes the task.

getStatus.endTask

reset

Sometimes it is necessary or usefull to reset the whole status service. Resetting the status service removes all pending tasks and initializes all status aware elements.

getStatus.reset