Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Tom, yes they certainly can be on the server. It doesnt defeat the object
You simply control who accesses which via filename.
You could also keep them on the C drive and use the same filename.
The point is that your form always belongs to one shadow table.

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

No comments for a while so you lot are trying it out.
Lets hear from you when done.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Ray.

This is new territory for me. Can you break the entire sequence down into smaller steps ?

I'm confused about the data entry sequence.

When the shadow table opens is the "real" table opened also?

Is the shadow table a physical table? (It would seem so)

When records are entered into the shadow table are they entered into the "real" table automatically?

I'm having trouble seeing the advantage here in a multi-user setting (it seems to me that the "link" or "shadow" relationship must be invoked before your data entry begins. This suggests that both shadow and "real" tables are open during data entry. )

Thanks.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Ray, maybe this will help you understand my confusion.

In a multi-user app where high data entry speed is the goal, I could envision a design that uses local tables on each workstation. Data entry to the local table involves no network activity. When the transaction is accepted / finished a script then appends the transaction records to the database tables on the server. Collisions with other users are minimized (and can be easily trapped) since no one on the network is editing data directly in the tables on the server.

I thought maybe your shadow tables would fit this model, but they do not seem to. Am I missing something?

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Tom, you are 100% correct.
The exclusive use of temp files was not the main reason for my using shadow tables. It is a spin-off because I personally like it - I can go into the reasons with you. To do with data confidentiality, and accessibility, trace-ability from the server, testing purposes and my own phobias.

Simply for personal temp tables the C: option is fine. As you said. works exactly the same. For the multi-user purpose only.

My reasons using shadow tables is for a more far reaching porpoise (humour), mainly around finding, viewing, printing and maybe even editing, following data wherever it lies as it moves and replicates rather than a multitude of file and record copies. And all that using a common interface set.
the structure of all of the different extended tables is different to the shadow, but all have at least the shadow's fields. for example auto incrementing different fields in each location. Ultimately an invoice can be tracked via its history, archive retrieval and origins but each in a different vertical part of the application.
SHIKES Im now getting convoluted. And thats the short explanation. I'll stop here - ask if further interested.

The shadow table NEVER "OPENS" - it only contains a pointer. No records.

[JetLi]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Experts are now confused a bit, how much more to beginners,Ray, can you possibly share your sample in the Code Archive? Seems your approach is very much effective that even long time alpha users are not aware of your technique.Thanks!

[GGandhi]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

hello
i never had a runtime license, finally bought one and reading thru the documentation and playing with it ( along with my web development).
i see if we do network optimization, it creates a shadow copy of all the files in the original master db. i store that in a separate folder along with supporting folders. and when you open the shadow copy it looks and feels like the regular master
and it updates the master instantly. so far tried using with two computers and the record insertion has been painless.
should i create another temp copy of the shadow table to work with it, to be safe?

[JetLi]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

I don't have so much money but I really need to have his kind of solution suggested by Ray, Can someone offer do it for me with a price, May I request for the lowest bidder because as I have said I dont have much money.Please Pm me if somebody is interested.It is quite disappointing that the browse control cannot handle this kind of multiuser situation which is very much common for many applications, the xdialog is highly suggested but it takes too much code and contradicts alpha five's RAD nature. If the browse control could be improved for this then alpha five is the best RAD tool for desktop database RAD tool.

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

@Tom
There is the advantage in that whilst developing, and later changing, ALL changes to form rules, table rules etc are done once to the shadow and apply to all the tables that will get used. Even when you create new user tables. One table can then be used by different forms providing different attributes. I haven't even explored all the possibilities yet. There is nothing in the help other than the sample with the function.

@Jet. I pointed earlier to the fundamental code and gave example function to do the switching. This is quite powerful and very specific to your needs.
You really should experiment.
I will try to put a generic demo together, focussed only on the aspect of temp private tables that interests you - but you would still want to go into those to see how they work to tailor it. You may have more questions than I could answer.

I'm thinking the meantime if Tom would explain the local pc method that might get you there quicker.
That I imagine would entail checking a local drive for existence of the temp table and create it if is not. Your code would specifically refer to a C drive.

@Gandhi - there is a difference to shadow database which is a copy of the whole database (all tables), this is regarding table shadow.

When this facility was released in V10 Selwyn made mention of its usefulness - no one else seemed to see a use.
I had a need, with what I had been doing in systems previous, and this looked like a possibility - it turned out so, and more than expected. Maybe others with more experience in Alpha are adept at writing programs that do the same thing, for me I struggled for long - this is deployed easily - after a lot of experimentation, testing what happens when...

[JetLi]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Thanks very much Ray for the example, I hope you can spend a bit more time and charge me for it so that it would be more complete.

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

I will post or send you a working sample to see if it is actually the panacea (= the solution to all problems) you expect.
I wont write a specific system for you - the brief would have to be very specific and detailed.

[JetLi]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

I will post or send you a working sample to see if it is actually the panacea (= the solution to all problems) you expect.
I wont write a specific system for you - the brief would have to be very specific and detailed.

Thanks very much!

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

AS promised
A basic working demo for invoicing using shadow for temp tables. It explicitly offers facility for two users each independent of each other.
I added a simple field rule to demonstrate how rules migrate with the shadow.
Uses only a header and lines tables which are shadow linked.
Start with the start form - the NEW button would show how one can ZAP the invoice tables whilst other users are invoicing.

You can, in the standard manner add field rules, additional tables for stock lookup and customer details. Add totals tax calcs etc
Add buttons on the form to proceed with print and archive and post and all of those things as normal.

This is offered purely as a learning exercise to learn from or not as you choose. No warranty or support is to be expected.
In the spirit of this we can all learn from any new application anyone discovers so post back.

And JEt what I would like is to know WHERE YOU ARE operating from?

[JetLi]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Ray, What if I will be adding a new table called customer and products, am I going to create a shadow also for these two tables? how did the Two tables invhshadow and invlshadow got created?I also noticed that the structure cannot be edited, I tried to delete them on the workspace because I thought they can be automatically added by clicking new on the start menu, are the shadow tables created on the fly?. This might work well Ray, nice approach to multi user, I am trying to figure the logic behind , BTW, how do I combine both the invoices of the two users so that when I create a report, it would come from only a sales header and a sales detail line?

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Data Entry Technique for a Grocery Application

Thanks, Ray. I'll enjoy studying this over the weekend.

-- tom