I’ve looked but haven’t found any option or guidance on how to prevent the generation of field captions when creating an Access database.
Use of captions in Access is a nightmare - no matter what alias you choose to give a field in a query, Access persists in using the field’s ‘caption’ value, if one exists. This then allows two or more query columns to have the same name - which for the unwary (like my clients) can be a confusing show-stopper.
(Yes - I can create code that removes them once I’ve built the database…but happy not to explore that option. And yes, I could modify the DDL (VBA) before I run it to prevent the caption from being created. But, I’d rather a toggle option in TOAD.)
I've created a new enhancement request (TDM-2816) to add option to generate / don't generate captions in Access. It could be in some of the next TDM versions.
Btw. If you modeling query / view in TDM there should not be any problem because views uses only name of columns. See the attached screenshot.
Excellent, thanks David - much appreciated; I’m sure the option to de/activate field Captions will be welcome.
Can I suggest it be toggled “off” by default in line with ‘separation of concerns’ and abstraction best practice – adding alternative names of things intended to help users, like this use of captions in place of field names, should be restricted to the interface/presentation layer, and not the data layer - in my opinion (this is a Microsoft Access design issue of course, but I think we should resist persisting with poor design).
