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

Form Advice Needed .....

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

    Form Advice Needed .....

    I have created a police report that has a parent table which contains general report info. i.e. Date, Time, Case Number, etc. I then have a child table that contains the names of people associated with the report, such as Victims, Witnesses, etc., and is linked by the Case Number. (I would like to have no more than six "people" entries per report.) Now here's my question:

    I want to create a form that will allow the user to input the parent data, and have fields for six persons. I've tried placing the "person" fields on the form six times from the 'drag-n-drop' list, but all I get is six fields that end up showing whatever data was entered in the first one.

    So far the only way I've been able to enter six different people is to use an embedded browse, but that really doesn't work well on a police report.

    I've been able to make this senario work on the web with the A5v6 Web Application Server (which is really unrelated to this forum) by setting the properties to show six new record entries at a time, but can't seem to figure out how to do the same thing on a form, and with version 4.5.

    Any assistance would be appreciated.
    Sergeant Richard Hartnett
    Hyattsville City Police Department
    Maryland

    #2
    RE: Form Advice Needed .....

    You'll probably need to capture the names to form variables and write/create child records from those.
    There can be only one.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: Form Advice Needed .....

      That sounds a little over my head. Is that the only way? Or should I say, is that the easiest way?
      Sergeant Richard Hartnett
      Hyattsville City Police Department
      Maryland

      Comment


        #4
        RE: Form Advice Needed .....

        After re-reading your post I noticed.

        "So far the only way I've been able to enter six different people is to use an embedded browse, but that really doesn't work well "b"on a police report"/b"."

        If you are using the form as the printout I would suggest that you create a report instead. There is much more flexibility there.
        There can be only one.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: Form Advice Needed .....

          Forgot to check the html box...

          After re-reading your post I noticed.

          "So far the only way I've been able to enter six different people is to use an embedded browse, but that really doesn't work well on a police report."

          If you are using the form as the printout I would suggest that you create a report instead. There is much more flexibility there.
          There can be only one.

          Comment


            #6
            RE: Form Advice Needed .....

            Well eventually it will have to be printed, but the purpose of my form is for DATA ENTRY. I will probably use the reports generator when it comes time to print.
            Sergeant Richard Hartnett
            Hyattsville City Police Department
            Maryland

            Comment


              #7
              RE: Form Advice Needed .....

              Hey, I think the way you would get the result you are wanting is to add a number field to the child records and have it enter numbers one through six in those fields when the parent record is created, then display the records in numerical order on your form based on the number field, though you don't need to display the actual number field on your form. Don't know if I made this very clear, anyway it is just a thought.

              Ron

              Comment


                #8
                RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                Hmmm interesting Ron, but how would I go about having the parent record automatically assign 6 numbers to the child record table each time a new report is started?
                Sergeant Richard Hartnett
                Hyattsville City Police Department
                Maryland

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                  There are so many people who monitor this site who are so much smarter than I, hopefully some of them will jump in and improve on my suggestion. The way to get alpha to fill in the child records it seems to me would be to write a loop program in xbasic and put that in the onchange field event for the first field that is filled in on the parent form. In that way when a new form is started it would create the necessary child records.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                    The one problem I see with that method is that there will be unecessary records created with only a number in them for data, in the instances where the user has less than six people to list in that section/

                    Seems like there must be an easier way, but I'm not nearly as well-versed in it as you or most of the folks on here.

                    Anyone else have a suggestion? Tom Cone you listening? LOL
                    Sergeant Richard Hartnett
                    Hyattsville City Police Department
                    Maryland

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                      Richard,

                      I've been watching in hopes that what you're trying to do will become clearer. Unfortunately I'm still in the dark.

                      Most designers would use a two table set. The primary table would contain facts about the incident. The linked one to many child table would contain facts about those involved in the incident (one person per record). A simple embedded browse would be used in a set based form to show a few of the key facts about each person. An OnRowDblClick event would open a companion form to show full details about each person, one person at a time.

                      You've rejected this approach but haven't said why. Can't offer suggestions til I get a better fix on the problem. Sorry.

                      -- tom

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                        Sorry if I confused you guys, I guess my description of what I'm trying to do is not coming out to clear, and it looks like it may not be possible anyway.

                        But just to clarify things I've attached a screen shot of what I wanted to the form to look like. If you look at the picture, you'll see the "parent" form in the first black frame. (Case Number, Date, Time, etc.)

                        The next two frames contain fields from the child table, and would represent the first two of six locations for entries of "people" related to the incident. (Disregard the tabs for this demo.) This is how I wanted to form to look to the person filling it out, as it looks very similar to the "hand-written" versions of the same report, other than that fact that the hand-written version has six places to enter "people."

                        Now as you can see in this screen shot, the name information for "Person 1," is duplicated in "Person 2" because I got the fields from the 'drag-n-drop' list and that just repeats the same record from the child table over and over.

                        What I wanted to have was six blank records from the child table always visible on the form for the user to fill in. Of course the user may not always need all six records, in fact at times he may only need one, but the hand-written version has places for six, so I wanted the computerized version to look the same. As such, the embedded browse that I tried ended up looking very confusing, as it had fields running way off to the right of the form, to accomdate all of the necessary "person" fields.

                        Tom, I really wasn't rejecting the embedded browse idea, I just didn't think it would look right on the form, although now that you talk about an OnRowDblClick event which would open up a companion form, that sounds like it may be what I'm looking for, I'm just not sure how to go about setting it up.

                        Any assistance you or Ron could offer on how to set up an embedded browse that only shows a few basic fields about the person being entered, then bringing up a separate form which shows all of the additional details would be greatly appreciated.

                        (I'm learning a little more each day.)
                        Sergeant Richard Hartnett
                        Hyattsville City Police Department
                        Maryland

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                          I just noticed that the screen shot doesn't come out too clear if you view it from internet explorer. For a 100% better view, download it to your computer and view in a photo program. (It's only 165kb)

                          -- Rich
                          Sergeant Richard Hartnett
                          Hyattsville City Police Department
                          Maryland

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                            Rich,

                            Thanks. That helped a lot. There's no practical way to present six blank child table records on screen at the same time.

                            The paper form you're emulating concedes blank space for unneeded "people" data. If the officer doesn't need it it just stays blank. This takes up space, but who cares.

                            The paper form you're emulating concedes that no more than 6 "people" will be involved in the incident. What does the officer do if more are involved?

                            To mimic the paper form, abandon the child table, and put the fields in the incident table corresponding to person1, person2, person3, etc. You'll have the same strengths and same weaknesses as the paper form. You waste disk space for unneeded "people" fields, and you are limited to a maximum of six "people" for any one incident. Just like the paper form. Doing it this way there's only one record open for edits. It contains incident fields and people fields (x 6).

                            Personally, I think it would be a mistake to do this, and would recommend using an embedded browse as a navigation device, and the onrowdblclk to open a separate form for edits. Doing it this way your app can handle gracefully situations in which the number of "people" is different from 6.

                            -- tom

                            Comment


                              #15
                              RE: Form Advice Needed .....

                              Richard,

                              Stan Matthews first response at the top of the thread is a good alternative, but will require more work from you.

                              Instead of putting any child table fields in the data collection form, you use a bunch of separately named variables, one group for each "person" involved in the incident.

                              Your Save button could be scripted to examine the variables, and for each separate group, it could enter a corresponding new record in your child table.

                              The reverse would have to be scripted also. When the user navigates to a new "incident" Alpha will have to retrieve the field values from all related child table records, so they can be assigned to layout variables and displayed to the user.

                              Lots of work, but doable.

                              -- tom

                              Comment

                              Working...
                              X