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

Field Rule dilemma

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

    Field Rule dilemma

    Does anyone know of anyway to turn all field rules off, then turn them all back on? my problem is i have databases that my employees make calls in on a daily basis. two field rules which are the employees name "paul" and the calldate which is Date(), must be turned on so we know who and when the record was called. i sometime forget that the rules are on, and do a update function. this obviously updates every record to "paul", and the current date. can i create a button, script, or anything that would allow me to turn the rules all off at once, do my data maintenance, and then turn them all back on? i know it is only two fields, but it is a hassle to go through all the fields to turn on and off only two rules. if anyone can help i would appreciate it.

    #2
    RE: Field Rule dilemma

    Paul,

    I don't know of an easy way to automate what you describe.

    If it were me, I'd probably disable the two field rules permanently. Then I'd force the users to do data entry to the table using a single form. In that form I'd include scripts which supply the necessary values when needed. The scripts hooked to the fields on your form layout can do just about anything the field rules can do for the table. However, it will involve a small bit of xbasic. The only drawback is that these scripts won't run unless data entry is occurring through the form. This 'drawback' becomes a 'feature' in your situation, because the updates can be done outside the form.

    -- tom

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Field Rule dilemma

      Have you tried using a default value instead of a calculated field? Then the value would only change when an entry is made, not during a change or update.

      Be sure to set skip to .t. and set the field on the form to read_only.
      Al Buchholz
      Bookwood Systems, LTD
      Weekly QReportBuilder Webinars Thursday 1 pm CST

      Occam's Razor - KISS
      Normalize till it hurts - De-normalize till it works.
      Advice offered and questions asked in the spirit of learning how to fish is better than someone giving you a fish.
      When we triage a problem it is much easier to read sample systems than to read a mind.
      "Make it as simple as possible, but not simpler."
      Albert Einstein

      http://www.iadn.com/images/media/iadn_member.png

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Field Rule dilemma

        al, i have more than one operator calling on the database, when i default it puts the same operator name on all records so that didnt work. thanks anyway. if you have any other suggestions i would entertain them.

        Paul

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Field Rule dilemma

          tom, there would be no data entry, it would be record changes only. i am surprised that i am the only one with this problem. especially for a contact management database.

          if you have any other suggestions let me know.
          paul

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Field Rule dilemma

            Paul,

            The field rules are stored in the table's dictionary files.

            If you do your update to the DBF using a DIFFERENT database, you could copy the revised DBF back to your 'real' database folder without affecting the field rules. This 'maintenance' version of your database could have the field rules disabled, so you could do your update without interference.

            Obviously care must be taken to avoid missing changes to the DBF while you're working on the update, but presumably you're doing that now.

            -- tom

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Field Rule dilemma

              If you look in XBasic Explorer, Constants, Field Rules Constants, you will find "Honor_field_rules" and "Ignore_field_rules".
              I've searched the xbasic manual and the Alpha 5 user guide and found absolutely no reference to either of these, however, perhaps you can play around with them.
              Sorry I can't be of more help.
              tc

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Field Rule dilemma

                I think you could still find a way to use the default value. If you have some 'calculation' that is able to identify the current user enough to enter the correct value in a calculated field, then you should be able to build a similar calculation that will work for the default value.

                If you can't do it, post the calculated expression so we can make a more educated suggestion.

                Comment

                Working...
                X