entering Parent and child record at the same time

[hov333]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Help me to understand, what would be your suggestion in this case. We are a sub-contractor so it gets a bit tricky.
Our customer creates the PO based on what THEIR customer reports they are sending in to us. What we actually receive may be comepletely different than the PO. Therefor there are two fields (reported part number & actual part number). Now our core customers have a fixed list of parts so I need to be sure whatever is logged in for them is an exact match to the list. On the other side, the general customer can send us ANY part. How would you set this type of scenario up?

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

You have lost me in the translation.
Generally, to me , a customer Buys stuff from the supplier. As you describe;-
Your are a sub-contractor (of what)
Your customers SEND you (What)
That may be different than the PO (Purchase orders are for what you are purchasing)

I can only assume along the lines of;
you get sent branded products to repair and your customers pre-empt what parts will be needed by sending you a PO.
When the product arrives it may not be what they said or not need the parts they said.
Once the terminology is clear we should have no problem assisting you with more concise suggestions.

[hov333]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Apologies, I should clarify. We are a repair shop, with 2 core customers and a dozen general/internet/walk-in customers. We service a set list of products for the two main customers who issue a repair PO to us and send us the defective part for repair.
One of these core customers works a bit differently: When an item is defective, THEIR customer orders a new one which the warehouse sends to them, and they send the defective to the warehouse. This warehouse then routes the defective to us for repair. The repaired item is sent back to the warehouse and stored as 'good' stock.

So my biggest challenge is to set up a system that will separate out the items of these core customers from the general customers. The reason being that the core customers are given discounts which should not be applied to the parts of the general customer.

Hope this helps!

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Looks to me like the discussion has drifted off topic. May I suggest that the design questions be reframed in the Database Design forum of this board? Thanks.

[hov333]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Good point Tom. Should I repost this question in a new thread?

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Yes, thanks. Limiting each thread to a single topic helps the board serve as a better knowledge base.

[Larry Gordon]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Going back to your post #4, I think I would create a new table. This table would contain the basic PO information, i.e. Company name etc. It would also contain your due date field. I would then create a new set, with your current tables as children. (Bear in mind that you can have as many sets as you like. Sometimes it's worth considering reversing the parent/child relationship, i.e. what we consider as the natural parent, might sometimes be better suited as a child).

Now you can create a browse listing of your PO's, which on double-clicking on a row would open a form with several embedded browses - each embedded browse listing your current tables.

The new browse above - listing your PO's - would have a column showing due dates. (I normally set up field conditions to colour due dates green, orange and red).

[hov333]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Thanks for all the input so far guys. I'm currently working with one main table capturing the basic PO information, and a child table containing only the customer specific fields as suggested. The issue is if someone is entering a PO then moves to enter data into the "custom" fields (in the child table) but decides to cancel the entry by hitting ESC, only the record in the child table is cancelled. So now there is a parent with missing details since there is no child record. Does this make sense?

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

John there are many alternative strategies available.
You can do something pre new entry, like capture to variable or temp table for the master and only when a child is accepted, post it all.
Or choose to follow a POST process to remove a childless parent before leaving the record.

[hov333]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

ray could you help by giving an example of how to create a post process to remove the childless parent. I tried using "delete record" on cansave event but this doesn't always fire for some reason. Any other suggestion?

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

I've never tried that - but I wouldn't expect it to work properly, deleting a record on cansave sounds contradictory.
If you haven't yet saved then try cancel() on the cansave

[hov333]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

I tried cancel, but it is essentially cancelling when user pressed ESC. The issue is it cancels at the child level only, the parent has already been created. I guess it has to create the parent before it can move into the child record, but can't think of a work around.

[Ray in Capetown]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

ray could you help by giving an example of how to create a post process to remove the childless parent. I tried using "delete record" on cansave event but this doesn't always fire for some reason. Any other suggestion?

Regarding removing a parent with no child.
John this depends entirely on the design (Form with browse probably) , urgency (must it immediately be gone or appear gone), user activity etc
It would probably not be a good idea to remove the PO immediately without user option - they may still want to add item/s
Wouldn't a simple DELETE button do the job? It could check that no child exists.

Else have a maintenance routine, perhaps on opening the form, that checks for and removes childless records.

Ask "how to" based specifically how you want this to function.

[Peter.Greulich]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Getting back to post #1 you could use xdialog, but then you have to hand code it. The limitation w. xdialog is that it doesn't have a "browse' for multiple child records so you would need to create static rows using variables. So if you never enter more than 7 or 8 child records you might have to put in 10 "rows" as a safety. It's more work but it completely eliminates the problem you present. If you were using v11 or 12 you could use a dialog/ux web component on the desktop which is easier than xdialog to achieve the same result.

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: entering Parent and child record at the same time

Peter,

Edit: oops forgot to hit submit last night. <doh>

Hmmm,you got me thinking(plus it is late here and I have had some nice aussie red and a bit of port). How about going somewhere in between. You could do as you suggest with the xdialog variables for the parent record. Also add one set of variables for one child record just for entry purposes. Then add to the xdialog an embedded browse to display the multiple children. That way one could enter the parent info and one child info and then submit/commit that data. Only if there was data in the child fields would the data in the parent fields get saved. After the first child subsequent saves/commits of the parent data could be contingent on a flag or if there is a change in the data. There could also be a seperate form opened to edit the parent data if that data needed changing later on. To add more child records there would need to be a "Add record" button that would clear the child variable section ready for new input. Selecting an existing record in the accompanying embedded browse could populate the 'fields' in the child entry variables for editing.


Also, if a seperate process is used to assign the parent id linking field ( ie a homemade autoincrement value) that did not need to remain consecutive ( ie if a value was generated and then discarded leaving a gap in the sequence) Then more than one child could be entered before the whole shabang was saved.

Reading the whole thread again it seems like in this (John's) case there is only one child record ( that being for those special/extra fields for the two core customers).
If this is the case then an xdialog might be the way to go.