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Novice looking for a point in the right direction

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    Novice looking for a point in the right direction

    I have been playing around with Alpha Five on and off for a couple years but have never really gotten a good grasp of it. I just upgraded to Version 9 and have decided to get serious with it. I manage a MySQL database for the volunteer fire department I am a member of and want use Alpha Five to develop an application to display some information and run some reports against it.

    I have scoured the message board, read the tutorials and user guide, watched the videos, worked through Susan Bush's book, plodded about half way through Peter Wayne's book and still can't seem to be able to do exactly what I want to accomplish. I think I am getting somewhere and I only end up with something that doesn't work quite right or I get more confused.

    Here's the scenario;

    I have a table (pers) with member info with a key field of 'persid'. There is also a table of incident records (nfirsmain) with key field of 'nfirsmainid'. Next there is a table of attendance records for the incidents (nfirsatt) with linking fields.

    We also have a similar table for non-incidents such as meetings, drills, trainings, etc called ni, with attendance records in the table called niatt.

    What I want to do is create a form that starts out with a summary of attendance by member, filtered by year through a combo box. Then the user should be able to select either tabs or via conditional objects a detail view of each category, for example on member x summary page it shows him how many incidents he attended, how many drills, meetings etc. and then the detail page (tab) shows him a list (in a browse) of each particular event. I also need to do additional calculations on the count of records to display some conditional items. This all needs to be based on a chosen year.

    I started a form (Main) that is partially working but not quite right. The combo box seems to filter the records upon change, but only about 3 or 4 times and then you have to hit F5 to get the browse to refresh. The count of the records does not work at all.

    Would somebody please help get me pointed in the right direction. It seems like this should be simple to do but I have been struggling with it for days.

    I have attached the database and hope it is clearer upon looking at it.

    #2
    Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

    Hi Doug,

    Welcome to Alpha.

    You say you have been playing around with Alpha for a couple of years but I see this is your first message on this forum, so welcome.

    The browse on your Main form as you have it, needs to have a query ran against it to view the number of records for a selected year. The refresh will not do this alone.

    I would suggest you keep this a simple as possible to start with and build in the complexity as you get a better understanding of how Alpha works.

    Have a good look at AlphaSports.
    Regards
    Keith Hubert
    Alpha Guild Member
    London.
    KHDB Management Systems
    Skype = keith.hubert


    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

      Thanks for the welcome Keith, I have been reading the message board for those "couple of years" and the amount of help you regular posters give is amazing!

      I will take your suggestion of starting simple and building from there.

      I'll also look into querying against the browse to filter it. Did it look like I have my set built properly to achieve what I want?

      I'm going back to the manuals again but I must say thay are seriously in need of some work. The documentation is not up to date and doesn't match what they are trying to refer to. The code in the documentation doesn't match the code in the application, the manual is from prior versions and hasn't been updated to reflect changes. Many of the replies to new users send them to the manual or Alpha Sports but I find myself spending a lot of time trying to match an old manual against newer code and methods. I could understand the lack of revisions in a printed manual but since this is electronic it would seem like Alpha could easily change something as simple as Alpha Five Version 8 to Alpha Five Version 9 on the title pages.

      I'll get off my soapbox now and get back to trying to learn this properly.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

        Hi Doug,

        I have fixed your filter for the browse to show selected year.
        [quot]Did it look like I have my set built properly to achieve what I want?[/quote]Not for whay you have built so far, but it could be for how tha app develops.

        You have the member as the master table, but only show one member on the main form. How ar you going to view/find and select other members?

        You have many child tables in the set, tip: Only have the the tables you need in a set for the task in hand.
        Regards
        Keith Hubert
        Alpha Guild Member
        London.
        KHDB Management Systems
        Skype = keith.hubert


        For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

          My plan is to have a record navigation setup similar to the Customers form in Alpha Sports to select the member.

          I designed the set that way because eventually I need to include the NI attendance records in the same form for a summary view. I have gone through many different ideas of how to present the data but for the purposes of this application the two different record sets need to be viewed together.

          I tried your fixed form but it is still not working correctly. When the form is first opened it will filter upon selection of the year for about the first 2 or 3 times but then it stops filtering. If you go into design mode and then back to form view it starts working again but only 2 or 3 times. Sometimes pressing F5 will refresh the browse but not always. It was doing that with me also with the way I had the OnChange event. Any ideas?

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

            Actually this problem is very inconsistant. I just tried it again and thought it was related to a particular year but upon trying it again it works correctly for many tries in one session and then in another session it comes back. Hmmmm.....

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

              Hi All,

              I have looked at this app for Doug and the problem is that the browse does not refresh after the OnChange event of the ComboBox Variable.

              The strange thing is, the Browse does work, after a value is selected, the form is put into design mode and then back to view mode.

              I would like to understand what needs to be fixed, as I'm sure Doug does.
              Regards
              Keith Hubert
              Alpha Guild Member
              London.
              KHDB Management Systems
              Skype = keith.hubert


              For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

                I see the behaviour as well. Once the browse seems to stop refreshing try scrolling the browse records and then it starts to refresh again for a couple of times.

                After noticing this I changed the OnChange of the vcyear to
                Code:
                topparent:Browse1.fetch_first()
                and it refreshed consistantly.
                Tim Kiebert
                Eagle Creek Citrus
                A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

                  Hi Tim,

                  Thanks for looking at this.

                  The browse did refresh but only after the form had been in design mode first.

                  As soon as you view the form from the CP it stops working.
                  Regards
                  Keith Hubert
                  Alpha Guild Member
                  London.
                  KHDB Management Systems
                  Skype = keith.hubert


                  For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Novice looking for a point in the right direction

                    Hi,

                    I have looked around some of my old apps and found the following.

                    this.resynch()
                    tbl=table.current()
                    tbl.index_primary_put("date1")
                    tbl.fetch_first()
                    browse1.index_set("date1")
                    browse1.resynch()
                    browse1.refresh()

                    This code was used behind a date variable that was changed by an AxtiveX Calendar. The code was the OnChange Event which refreshed the Browse.

                    You can see from the code the browse was refreshed from an Index.

                    Maybe that will give another thought.
                    Regards
                    Keith Hubert
                    Alpha Guild Member
                    London.
                    KHDB Management Systems
                    Skype = keith.hubert


                    For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

                    Comment

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