Express Unattended / Use Prior Analysis (Settings/Preferences tab)
Express Unattended is a switch for suppressing all warnings and dialog boxes that may appear during an Express Analysis. The idea is to minimize the required interaction (once a user clicks the Express button). This lets developers provide simple "one-click" instructions for regenerating predefined Views to users of their redistributed applications.
Checking the Express Unattended box means that warnings won't appear during the analysis process -- for example, those noting the presence of unrelated tables within an interface. Dialog boxes that would normally request user feedback are also blocked. This includes dialog boxes related to the use of elfAnalysis tables which may have been created during a previous analysis for the View. The decision whether to use or ignore existing analysis tables can be made in advance by setting the "Use Prior Analysis" checkbox, which becomes active whenever "Express Unattended" is checked.
Another effect of checking "Express Unattended" is to suppress the appearance of the "Access ELF ready to respond." message box which appears following an analysis.
It is also possible to skip over the initial Express/Custom window which is normally the first step in the analysis process. This can be done with hidden ExpressOptions properties, and is intended for use by developers who want to completely lock-out their users from making customizations to a distributed interface (by re-analyzing and applying configuration changes).
If you plan to do this, please follow these instructions carefully, to avoid violating your license agreement. The main point is that you may modify the Usys ELF macros imported into a client MDB at will -- but if you modify the originals within the elf32.mda library, you may not distribute that library, nor allow it to be distributed. See also these restrictions on distributing modified libraries.
To suppress the initial Analysis window, you must write a new function to invoke the analysis. That function can be triggered in the usual way by a command button or macro, or you can modify the built-in Usys ELF Analyze macro so that it triggers this routine. (To view the Usys ELF macros, check "System objects" from the View tab of the Microsoft Access Tools / Options window.) For instance, you could change the single line of code associated with the [Usys ELF Analyze] macro from =aetbAnalyze() to =myAnalyze().
Here is an example of a custom myAnalyze() function, which can set hidden properties prior to an analysis:
Function myAnalyze()
Dim result
elf32.ExpressOptions.Nonstop = True
elf32.ExpressOptions.ViewName = "Northwind"
elf32.ExpressOptions.HideQueryWindow = True
result = aetbAnalyze()
End Function
Whether the Express/Custom window appears is determined by the Nonstop variable. In other words, setting Nonstop to True is equivalent to pre-clicking the Express button on the Analysis window and having the "Express Unattended" checkbox set to ON. You can also preselect the name of the View you are creating, by setting the ViewName variable of ExpressOptions. Finally, you can decide whether the Access ELF Query window will appear following the analysis by setting the HideQueryWindow variable.
You can't change the Save To directory in this way, but there is a function available for this as well. In the unlikely event that you're switching between Views located in different physical locations (a practice which isn't recommended) you can programatically change the setting of the Save To box by using the Subroutine elfSetDirectoryPath(PathSpec). For example,
elfSetDirectoryPath "f:\\apps\interfaces"
elf32.ExpressOptions.ViewName = "Northwind"
Note that each variable can be used independently of the others. For instance, you might use the ViewName variable, without setting Nonstop True, in order to cause the Express/Custom window to appear with a preset value in the ViewName field. Similarly, you could use the HideQueryWindow variable alone to change the default behavior (opening the query window after each successful analysis).
Last Updated: March, 2002