Auto increment -Based on field

[gschepp]

I have both State Senators and State Representatives in file.

Fields: 1) House 2) District 3)GA_ID

Valid data for House field is either House or Senate.

District field is either a 3 digit character field for Representative Districts or a 2 digit character for Senate Districts.

GA_ID field is the problem

How do I auto-increment this field based on whether the member is a State Senator or State Representative? I already have everyone id properly with the appropriately. State House members start with H-001 and increments. State Senate members start with S-001 and increments.

I tried using conditional default values in Data Entry as follows:
Default ->"H-001"
Condition -> House="House"

Default ->"S-001"
Condition -> House="Senate"

It increments to "S-078" even though House field was empty.

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Auto increment -Based on field

I have both State Senators and State Representatives in file.

Fields: 1) House 2) District 3)GA_ID

Valid data for House field is either House or Senate.

District field is either a 3 digit character field for Representative Districts or a 2 digit character for Senate Districts.

GA_ID field is the problem

How do I auto-increment this field based on whether the member is a State Senator or State Representative? I already have everyone id properly with the appropriately. State House members start with H-001 and increments. State Senate members start with S-001 and increments.

I tried using conditional default values in Data Entry as follows:
Default ->"H-001"
Condition -> House="House"

Default ->"S-001"
Condition -> House="Senate"

It increments to "S-078" even though House field was empty.

You can't use Alpha's auto-increment field rule to auto-increment conditionally. As the docs state

In Alpha Five, it looks at the highest value for the field in the table, and adds one.

period, the end. So it will always increment the currrent highest S- value.

As a side note, the conditional default data entry field rule will have no effect on an auto-increment field. That is a mutually exclusive situation.

It should be possible to write your own auto-increment expression as a field rule onsave record event.

[gschepp]

Re: Auto increment -Based on field

Dang... that shoots that down

[Raymond Lyons]

Re: Auto increment -Based on field

Dang... that shoots that down

Although it should be fairly easy to do what Stan suggested:

It should be possible to write your own auto-increment expression as a field rule onsave record event.

However, you may need to think a bit about what those incremented numbers are supposed to represent (it's not clear to me), keeping in mind that however you might do it, what do you do about deletions that leave gaps in your numbering system? I suppose you could re-order all of them if there is a deletion, but what would that do to whatever you are doing with this data over time?

Ray

[gschepp]

Re: Auto increment -Based on field

I have other tables that provide more info about each elected person.

Based on this ID
Committee, position and rank (To generate reports in order of Chair, etc)
Employer, position, period
Education, degree, year
Government, position, period