Auto Increment Approach

[forskare]

I think this could be a bit of a different twist to the auto increment feature. This auto increment feature will take place in a child table and will start anew with each parent record. Example:

Parent record = James
Child record 1.1
Child record 1.2
Child record 1.3

Parent record = Mary
Child record 1.1
Child record 1.2
etc

I been studying various approaches but so far, everything seems to apply to a parent table.

Thoughts and suggestions please.

kenn

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

If I remember correctly, Peter Wayne has an article about incrementing child records. Check out his web site.

[forskare]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

If I remember correctly, Peter Wayne has an article about incrementing child records. Check out his web site.

Hi Peter,

I checked it out and worked with it some. One question I have is my auto increment field is a 4 digit 1 decimal field where it's the decimal that will be increased by 1 as opposed to the whole number.

Thanks for responding.

kenn

[Mike Wilson]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

kenn,
what is the purpose of the number to the left of the decimal place?

I have built several applications with family members and I have a two field system, one field for family_id and one for personal_id, which is a combination of family_id and the number to the right of the decimal. The number to the right of the decimal indicates the family position, with father being .01, mother being .02, first child = .03, second child=.04. This allows to group families, detect single parent families, segregate parents from children, enumerate children, etc, etc.

[Steve Wood]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

If you need it, there is a function for incrementing values, INCREMENT_VALUE().

Why do you want to have a special increment value for the child records? It is usually unnecessary unless using it to tell a story like Mike is doing. Before you know it your sequence will become a problem, like when you delete someone making a hole in your sequence, or you suddenly find you need to 'insert' someone to get the sequence right.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

One question I have is my auto increment field is a 4 digit 1 decimal field where it's the decimal that will be increased by 1 as opposed to the whole number.

Use 2 fields. One is the PKW autoinc field, and the other is a calc field. Something like:

"1." + alltrim(your_autoinc_field)

or if it needs to be a number and not a character, try:

val("1." + alltrim(your_autoinc_field))

I forget if Peter Wayne's code creates a character value or a numeric, so you may have to adjust the above.

[forskare]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

Hello Mike and Steve,

I am developing an app that will largely eliminate the bulk of criminal report writing for welfare fraud cases. Welfare fraud is a white collar crime. Add the quagmier of rules and regulations and the reciepe is there for disaster. I have to take what is complicated and make it easy to understand. Report writing is the key so anytime I can streamline it and make it easier as well as eliminate errors, the more success there will be.

Much of every case is the same because everyone uses the same forms, etc. I set up a child table for each form type and each table having a the linking field, date of the form and an evidence number assigned to the form.

With each form type (6 total, CAF, CRF, HRF, LLS, MED, OTR), there usually are several over a period of time. In order to differentiate each form, each must have a unique number, the evidence number. I assigned the evidence # 1 to CAF, 2 to CRF, etc. So, if there are 4 CAF forms, they would be 1.01, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04. I can manually enter then number each time I enter the form date but having A5 assign the evidence number would eliminate some work and more improtantly reduce the error margin. My data entry form has 6 browses (each child table), each containing the date and evidence # field.

I did change it from 1 to 2 decimals to allow for more than 9 and I attached a snapshot.

Thanks much,

kenn

[G Gabriel]

Re: Auto Increment Approach

Alpha's built-in autoincrement uses integer, not fractions. You cannot make it use fractions. You could get around this if you change the field to character which is not a good idea.

A better idea is to keep it as numeric and make it a calc field instead of autoinc and use something like:
field=dbmax(.......)+0.1