Reports from child records

[Steven Thompson]

I am sure I've seen this discussed before, but here we go again.

Back in Alpha 4 one could have a form with information from the parent in a one to many linked set. Within that form one could use a region to display records from a child table. That combined with a summary field made a friendly interface for accounting.

The form in question is used to display donor information and the region is used to display all of the donations by same donor. The donor's data (e.g. name,address, etc) is stored in the parent table and the donations in a child table. These are linked using a numeric field called PKEY (partner key).

Now the question: Using Alpha5v4 regions are not available as such. I tried using an embedded browsebut it would display no records. The same browse would work if I made a button to open it, but the making a neat summary field at the end of the browse proved difficult. So... I switched to the idea of printing a report to the screen. Works ok as long as I attach the report to the child table and not to the set. The only catch is you have to query the parent form based on PKEY before running the report, else it displays all donations for all donors.

Is there a simple action script or Xbasic method to pull only records for the active PKEY and report?

Thanks,


Steven Thompson

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Reports from child records

Maybe I don't understand your question. But if I do, the following should work:

FORM:
1. A form based upon your set.
2. A parent field or fields (or an embedded browse) based upon the parent table.
3. An embedded browse in the same form based upon the child table.

Whatever parent record is displayed, all the related child records to that parent will diplay, period.

REPORT:
1. A report based upon your set.
2. A parent field or fields based upon the parent table, in the report header or page header or group break (based upon the parent table).
3. A child field or fields in the DETAIL section of the report.
4. Drag and drop a button on your form to print the current (i.e. Parent) record of the report.

The report will print the current parent with all the related child records, period.

Trust me, I have two dozen or so sets utilizing both of the above. It absolutely positively works - allways!

Then again, if I have misunderstood your question, I go to the back of the class.

[Steven Thompson]

RE: Reports from child records

Not at all - you very much understood the question. Your answers are the methods recommended in the documentation.
For whatever reason (Win 2000? - don't think so) it isn't working as described. Maybe this is a forrest - trees idiom. Perhaps I should start from scratch. I really do believe in reading the docs before jumping on the list.

Here's the solution I came up with that works. It is a bit brutish. The bulldozer approach.

I have a button that uses Report.preview method here's the code:

tbl=table.current()
fld=tbl.field_get("Pkey")
CurrentPkey=fld.value_get()
:Report.preview("ThisYear","Pkey=CurrentPkey","Cdate")
parentform.resynch()
end

There's probably a more elegant solution, but this works consistently.


Steven T

[Peter.Greulich]

RE: Reports from child records

You might try recreating your set (an extra copy) and try it again. Mr. Selwyn and Alpha staff run on Win 2000, I believe. There must be some odd idiosyncrasy why it's not working for you.