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

A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

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

    A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

    Hi

    New to A5. When I 'join' two tables in Lotus Approach (broadly equivalent to creating a set in A5) I have the option to define the relationship by linking any number of common fields, not just a single key field as in A5.

    This means that any new child record created (say in an embedded browse)already has the common fields filled in (even if those fields are not displayed in the browse).

    How do I achieve the same effect in A5?

    #2
    RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

    Hi Alan,

    When you enter a new record in the child table the link field is automatically filled. The link must be unique for the parent and child to maintain integraty. All other fields can then be displayed in the child browse. It is not necesary to duplicate data from one table to another when you have created a Set. Hope this helps.

    Keith Hubert
    London.
    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: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

      Keith

      I don't have a problem with the relationship's integrity.

      I have a parent table with information contained in a number of fields that are common to the child table. If the JOIN is on more than one field, Lotus Approach will simply copy this information automatically on creation of a child record. The result is a child table that can be viewed or exported independently - without reference to any other table.

      Think of the child table as an audit trail - the information in each record is common to another table but stored independently of it.

      But how can I acheive this in A5??

      Comment


        #4
        RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

        Alan,

        I don't think Alpha Five will do this for you automatically. Perhaps I'm mistaken but I think the automatic 'fill in' of the link field value in newly entered child table records is limited to set designs employing a single field link.

        There are a number of ways you can supply this functionality yourself, but I don't believe it's built in to Alpha Five at the present time.

        One approach would be to create field rules in the child table which use a lookup() function to retrieve the corresponding values from the primary table.

        -- tom

        Comment


          #5
          RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

          Hi Alan

          Records can be exported from a Set to an ASC text file which can be used where ever you want. There is no need to duplicate data with Alpha. If you realey want to then you could Append the records you want to another table.

          Keith Hubert
          London.
          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


            #6
            RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

            Alan:

            When creating the link involving multiple fields. The fileds must be together and in the same sequence in both the parent and child records. Once the link is established the linking fileds should be populated for each new child record.

            I hope this helps.

            bob adler

            Comment


              #7
              RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

              Hi Robert,

              Just so I understand what you have described, create a set with multiple links to the same child table but only in the order you specifed? Not multiple fields linked together once?

              Keith Hubert
              London.
              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: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

                Hi Bob Adler

                Like Keith, I'm not clear what you're explaining. Can you please explain again - bearing in mind I'm new to A5 !!

                Many thanks

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

                  Alan

                  The rule to maintain referential integrity with a linking field is a single field or multiple concurrent fields. A second possibility is a calculated field composed of multiple concatinated fields (this fools the concurrent rule. e.g.
                  Parent table

                  Field 1 - System C3
                  Field 2 - Floor C2
                  Field 3 - Door C4
                  Field 4 - DHI C6
                  Link_key = (System + Floor + DHI) CALCULATED, Linking Field

                  Child Table

                  Field 1 - System (Link_Key,1,3) Calculated
                  Field 2 - Floor (Link_Key,3,2) "
                  Field 3 - DHI (Link_Key,9,6) "
                  Field 4 - Whatever
                  ......
                  Field 20- Link_Key (Defined as your single link field)
                  Link_Key is a single field used to link parent & child, the individual fields in the child record are the extracted from it.

                  Use it all the time as a parent may be linked to different children by different criteria.

                  Cheers, John

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

                    Jumping in to clarify matters, I hope. Bob uses the term "fileds (fields) must be together" and later John indicates they should be "concurrent".

                    Perhaps a more descriptive terminology would be that the fields used in the linking key should be "physically adjacent" or "contiguous" in the table structure.
                    There can be only one.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

                      Hello Alan,

                      Just to clarify, there are three ways that come to mind to get what you want.

                      1) when you define your link, at the parent level, instead of choosing a linking field, choose 'Expression'. Then define the expression as a concatenation of the desired fields. Make sure that the child link field is large enough to hold the concatenation. Now at the child level, the desired fields are concatenated in the link field. You can extract the individual fields by putting calculated fields in the child table with an expression such as: substr(link_Field,1,4).

                      2) Create a calculated field in the parent, the expression being the concatenation of the desired fields. Now link on this calculated field in the parent, and use the same technique for extracting in the child table fields.

                      3) Create field rules in the child table to 'get' the data from the parent. Alpha Five has limited support for set level field rules that will work fine for this.

                      Now time for me to get on my soap box. Never use the first two techniques except for very specific limited situations. Doing this in a networked environment with any decent level of data entry is a recipe for disaster. IMHO linking values should NEVER be related to real data. The autoincrement field rule is what should be used. Use the third technique if you really need to do this. However, you really should not need to do this. I understand what you are saying, but a simple reverse set one-to-one will accomplish what you want with no data duplication and little overhead. Make the child table the parent, and make the current parent table the one-to-one child, now all is available in a virtual 'flat' table.

                      There are a couple of other approaches you could use if you had to have the data in the child, and didn't want to add the overhead of a child level field rule. I'm thinking here of a batch operation to update the child fields before you ran your reports, etc.

                      Good luck,
                      Jim

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: A5v5 equivalent of JOIN in Approach

                        Amen to what Jim has just said.
                        I've not used Approach but what you wished to accomplish may have been the best or only way in Approach. That is not the case with Alpha. Setting up a link from a parent to child records using multiple, changeable field values from the parent is a bad idea.

                        Comment

                        Working...
                        X