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Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

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    Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

    Hi All,

    I am hoping that someone can shed some light on my problem. I have a grid based on an orders table (shown in 'showgrid.jpg'). I have one field in the grid which is supposed to show the customer name. This field is a dropdown with the 'choices' dialog filled in shown in 'fieldchoices.jpg'. Both images are contained in the attached zip 'grid.zip'.

    The customer name is in a different table than the orders and that is why the dropdown list is populated from another table.

    One of the problems (there are a couple) is that in the insert rows, a line of characters appears where the dropdown should be. It seems that A5 is trying to perform a lookup even though there is nothing on that line yet. If I turn the 'allow insert' option in the 'update settings' off, the line disappears and the grid displays normally but I need the user to update this grid.

    Could this be caused by some junk in the order or customer table? I originally populated the grid with lots of dynamic dropdowns and noticed no such side effect.

    What is your opinion?
    TIA,
    Rick

    #2
    Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

    Well I believe that I have found the cause of this strange grid behavior after many days of debugging ...again :(

    It turns out that this behavior is directly linked to how many items are loaded into a dropdown box in a grid. From my tests:

    - 922 items, ok
    - 8,351, not ok
    - 22,897, not ok

    It is clear that the number of dropdown items in a grid needs to be pruned. Normally, I would do this with a previous dropdown that pre-selects a topic or category but grid dropdowns cannot be dynamically updated like dialog dropdowns can.

    Someone here once said that they have not encountered anything that A5 cannot do. I beg to differ

    This is the third time that I have had to stop development and locate the cause of certain A5 behavior which has always been a bug. I am basically at the point of throwing in the towel and moving the development to LAMP.

    The development time and complexity of A5 should be reduced due to its RAD nature but any time advantage is wasted on locating the source of strange behavior or trying to find out how a feature is implemented that is poorly documented.

    Rick

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

      Rick,

      You know your users better than I, but how is someone going to deal with a dropdown that is over 20,000 items long?

      My suggestion is that you use a lookup table instead. That way, you can put a quick search in the lookup table and the user should be able to find his/her data much more efficiently.

      Pat
      Pat Bremkamp
      MindKicks Consulting

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

        Hello Pat,

        Thanks for the suggestion. I am familiar with lookup tables but I do not understand your use of the term here. The items are already in a separate lookup table. For example, a grid of orders with one of the dropdowns being the customer number from the order table which is a lookup to the customer details table. This customer details table has 8,351 records in it which should produce a dropdown with that many customer names in it.

        Using the above example, what do you mean by a lookup table?

        Rick

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

          Originally posted by rsmereka View Post
          Well I believe that I have found the cause of this strange grid behavior after many days of debugging ...again :(

          It turns out that this behavior is directly linked to how many items are loaded into a dropdown box in a grid. From my tests:

          - 922 items, ok
          - 8,351, not ok
          - 22,897, not ok

          It is clear that the number of dropdown items in a grid needs to be pruned. Normally, I would do this with a previous dropdown that pre-selects a topic or category but grid dropdowns cannot be dynamically updated like dialog dropdowns can.

          Someone here once said that they have not encountered anything that A5 cannot do. I beg to differ

          This is the third time that I have had to stop development and locate the cause of certain A5 behavior which has always been a bug. I am basically at the point of throwing in the towel and moving the development to LAMP.

          The development time and complexity of A5 should be reduced due to its RAD nature but any time advantage is wasted on locating the source of strange behavior or trying to find out how a feature is implemented that is poorly documented.

          Rick


          I agree with Pat. Putting 8,000 (let alone 2000) items into a Drop down control seems like a bad thing to do.

          I did a test of 8,000 items, and it worked OK, but was slow because A5 has to construct a huge html files (with all 8,000 entries in it), and then that file has to be transmitted over the internet, which will also be slow because the file is so big.

          Using a lookup field is definitely a better approach. The user will press an icon to open the lookup window and the window will come up quickly because it only shows a few items. The user can then search all 20000 in the list quickly and make a selection.

          To make a lookup field, you select a textcontrol and then check the Lookup option.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

            Originally posted by rsmereka View Post
            Hello Pat,

            Thanks for the suggestion. I am familiar with lookup tables but I do not understand your use of the term here. The items are already in a separate lookup table. For example, a grid of orders with one of the dropdowns being the customer number from the order table which is a lookup to the customer details table. This customer details table has 8,351 records in it which should produce a dropdown with that many customer names in it.

            Using the above example, what do you mean by a lookup table?

            Rick
            see example 1.21 in the demo web application that ships with alpha five.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

              While I understand the point raised about the number of items in the 'dropdown' component, I think my key point has been missed. Once again: why is it that dialog dropdowns show none of the strange behavior while dropdowns in grids manifest the behavior?

              I have taken a look at the text lookup component and it may be workable but it will change the design of the application and it is not what the user wants.

              Rick

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

                Originally posted by rsmereka View Post
                While I understand the point raised about the number of items in the 'dropdown' component, I think my key point has been missed. Once again: why is it that dialog dropdowns show none of the strange behavior while dropdowns in grids manifest the behavior?

                I have taken a look at the text lookup component and it may be workable but it will change the design of the application and it is not what the user wants.

                Rick
                How about a compromise? Could you try using two fields such that the drop down would be filtered before they try to use it? That way you keep the drop down you want but don't try to kill the app by filling it with 8000+ entries.

                This works like champ in a dialog, FYI.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Grid DropDown Strange Behavior

                  Here's a picture of a lookup I do in one of my apps. Sometimes a picture explains better than words.

                  In this app, people are registering for events. Clicking the spyglass brings up the lookup window. There, I can enter a few letters of the person's name, and the quick search brings up just the matches. Here, I have about 600 members, so there are normally only a few matches.

                  When I click select, it fills in the name, company, membership status and member number.

                  If you show this to your customer, he might like it enough to let you use it.

                  Pat
                  Pat Bremkamp
                  MindKicks Consulting

                  Comment

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