Access Cookbook

Programmatically Track Users and Groups

Problem

As the database administrator, you want to be able to track users and their groups within your workgroup. You know you can use Tools → Security → Print Security to print a report of users and groups, but you’d like to be able to use that information as part of the applications you write. How can you gather the information you need?

Solution

Using Data Access Objects (DAO), you can retrieve all the information you need about users’ names and groups. Once you have that information, you can use it in creating your applications.

The sample form frmUserGroups in 10-05.MDB fills tables with the information you need and presents it to you in a list box. To test it, open and run frmUserGroups. Figure 10-20 shows the form in use for a sample workgroup.

Figure 10-20. frmUserGroups shows users and groups for a sample workgroup

To gather this information in your own applications, follow these steps:

1. Create the tables you’ll need to hold the information. Either import the three tables from 10-05.MDB, or use the information in Table 10-13 to create your own.

   Table 10-13. Table layouts for gathering user/group information

   Table name	Field name	Field type	Primary key?
   tblGroups	Group	Text	No
   	GroupID	Counter	Yes
   tblUserGroups	UserID	Number (Long Integer)	Yes
   	GroupID	Number (Long Integer)	Yes
   tblUsers	UserName	Text	No
   	UserID ...