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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:
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  • 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:
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  • 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.
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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.
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Old Programmer - New Paradigm

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    #1

    Old Programmer - New Paradigm

    Must be too old or something. 20 years in COBOL and old BASIC and other "normal" languages. I picked up Alpha4 working for a mass mailer and loved it. We didn't do any programming with it however. I took a copy home and did what I wanted using just a couple of forms and reports etc. I'm a Softball Coach and League Official and .... I'm looking to do something like a Contact List/Bay (Field)Scheduler combination. Ticklers & printed schedules and tracking the games etc. I'd like the reports to come out in HTML format so I can just FTP it to my League web site to update schedules and league stats etc as well as in paper for handing to people without web access (same reports) ...... Get the families related using child files and have the capability of sending information to the child or the adult depending on what we need etc. Alpha V looks to be able to do all that. However ......

    I'm used to coding something like: (Pseudocode obviously)

    MAIN
    CALL BUTTON1
    CALL BUTTON2
    etc
    IF EXIT_REQUESTED STOP

    Button1
    Code
    EXIT

    Button2
    Code
    EXIT

    Obviously much of the above application will have reusable and interrelated code (or should if I had a clue) I've seen Dr Perlow's Application Library which I tried and somebody else had a free one out there etc but somehow it never connected to me on how to use them. I have both of the books in both the pre 4.5 and the 4.5 version formats and I have 4.3,4 & 5 and can't really get started. How/where do I look to get myself looking at this correctly so I can use it. It appears that Visual Basic works the same way mor or less and I bought Alpha V to avoid the 500$ expense of Microsoft just for the compiler/development environment without a database. I know Alpha can do this but I seem to be looking at it from the wrong angle somehow. Any ideas for the old guy??

    Thanks
    [%-{)>
    T-Rex

    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Old Programmer - New Paradigm

    The Membership Sample that ships with Alpha Five might be a good place to start.

    I suggest you pick a small part of the app and work on it until you feel comfortable, then expand by adding other modules, reports, etc.

    Get the Name, Address, and contact information part working.

    Learn how to pass information between forms. (there are helpful examples in the code archive by the way...)

    Do small pieces, one chunk at a time. I think you'll find the coding sequences to be easy to pick up, once you understand the object naming and referencing systems.

    -- tom

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Old Programmer - New Paradigm

      ...and if you haven't stopped by www.learn alpha.com to look at some of what's there, you may want to do that.

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Old Programmer - New Paradigm

        First things first. You should sit down and think real hard about how you want your data structured. Once you have the tables and sets designed, develop your forms, then reports, then the application to tie it all together. Like Tom and Paul said. ONE STEP AT A TIME!

        I have found that when the data is organized properly, the other pieces fall nicely into place. Don't be afraid to ose multiple sets to look at the same data a different way. I always tell my programmers, "If it doesn't seem to work one way, look at things differently." We haven't found much that we cannot do with alpha. It may take a little time not having structured programs to use, but the ability to make a dramatic presentation of the information by just dragging and dropping fields will definitely grow on you.

        I am into soccer instead of baseball. The attached was created in less than 1/2 hour.

        If you have any problems, post them, there are an awful lot of people here who are willing to help.

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Old Programmer - New Paradigm

          This time, I'll attach the file.

          Sorry,

          Tom

          Comment

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