Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

Customers and their Products

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    Customers and their Products

    I am trying to figure out how to display on a form (not report) showing customer info (as primary data) and in an embeded browse all the products the customer ever purchased.
    Customer table and Product table have no common fields, however the common tables are Invoice-InvLineItems. Should I create a set like this:
    Customers --> Invoices --> InvoiceLI --> Products and insert an embedded browse based on Products table, or is there a better/different approach.

    #2
    Re: Customers and their Products

    nope, reversing the set does not give me what I am looking for. It works for directly linked tables, but for indirectly linked tables I need a different appraoch. Any suggestion will be appreciated. Thanks

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Customers and their Products

      Seems to me your first approach should work. Primary table is customers. Invoices are linked to customers by customerID. Invoice Lines are linked to invoices by InvoiceID. Products are linked to invoice Lines by product ID. Your embedded browse should be based on Products. Did this not work?

      -- Dick James

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Customers and their Products

        Attached is an example of how this could be done. Ultimately some connection has to be made from customer to product. This example uses a calculated field in the line item table and a filtered set. Another way would be to use an embedded dialog and have the data supplied by code that steps through each table to assemble the data.

        Dick,
        The set you described would only show the products for one invoice at a time.
        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


          #5
          Re: Customers and their Products

          Hi Tim:
          Right on. The only problem I see is that each time the info is changed on the invoice (custID) a recalc is needed to update the inv_line. I would be perfect if the update was dynamic.
          Thanks

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Customers and their Products

            Gaby, to modify Tim's approach so that it works automatically even when the user changes a customer id will be very involved. I think you wind up twisting your basic data entry schema into a pretzel.

            If this form is going to be used rarely I'd give serious consideration to using temporary tables that get filled, viewed, and then emptied by scripts that run while the user sees a "retrieving data' message on screen.

            If this form is going to be used for actual data entry I'd give serious consideration to changing my table structures. If you add a customer id field to the inv_lines table you could use a set in which customers is primary, inv_items is child linked one to many, and inv_hdr and products tables are grandchildren linked one to one to Inv_items.

            -- tom

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Customers and their Products

              I was wondering how long it would take for someone to bring up the update anomaly that I created. Yes the calculated field in this case is not the best tool. A good example of how not and why not to use a calculated field.

              I made a few tweaks or should that be twists and think the attached is a bit safer. As Tom suggested I used a user entered field in the Line items table instead of a calculated one for the Cust_Id and then used xbasic in the field rules to set the initial value (might have been able to use the default value field rule and set to trigger at end of data entry) Then to allow for changes to the header table I added code to the CanWriteField event of the Customer_Id field and the OnSaveRecord event to update the line items.

              I agree with Tom that such a form used for data entry would need some serious work. But not knowing the whole context it is a bit hard to say. If the product browse is just used as informational I guess it would be reasonably safe.

              Gaby, In your initial post you specified "(not report)". Bear in mind that now in v9 it is very easy to embed reports into a form. The filter for the report can be linked to values taken from the form such as the Customer_Id. As you may have found the report engine often does a better job of aggregating data. Something more for you to explore. I am running out of spare time for now but it was a good exercise.
              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


                #8
                Re: Customers and their Products

                Hi Guys:
                The form is not for data entry, just for data display. I thought that showing grand children from the grand parent perspective would be that convoluted.
                Tim, I'll study your new approach and try to use an embedded report, it's goig to take me sometime as I am still reading the user guide and have not reached the xbasic part.
                Thanks to both for your input

                Comment

                Working...
                X