Still need help - Problem editing child.

[Gren Brown]

I have now pinned down the problem but cannot find a solution.

I have a set with Parent(Customers), Child1(Purchases) and Child2(Notes). The records are presented to the user on a tabbed form. Tab1 has the customer details, Tab2 has a browse of products purchased and editable fields from the selected purchase record, Tab3 has a browse of note records.

Here is the problem, if the user goes to Tab2 and selects a Purchase record and tries to edit a field, all the fields on that Purchase record are cleared, if the change is saved then the only field that has data is the one that has been changed. This does not happen if the edit is done within the browse, but there are too many fields for this to be practical.

Now here is the really strange thing, this only happens on records that have Notes and if I remove the browse of Notes from Tab3, then editing the purchases on Tab2 behaves correctly!

The form used to work OK and has only recently started misbehaving. I have created a new form starting from the default form for the set, without any tabs and that also misbehaves. I guess this must be a data dictionary problem but what should I do to correct it? I have tried reindexing and compacting to no effect.

[forskare]

RE: Still need help - Problem editing child.

Gren,

Did you create the new form from scratch or copy it and place the tabbed object on it?

Try placing the 2 browses on the form rather than the tabbed object. See how they react. If it works OK, perhaps it's the tabbed object. IF so, don't know why the cause but at least you would isolate it to the tabbed object.

Don't know about what else you've tried. How is the set linked. 1:1 or 1:Many. It should be a 1:Many.

Do you have an expression for the linking value?

My 2 cent thoughts.

kenn

[Gren Brown]

RE: Still need help - Problem editing child.

Hi Ken,

Created a new form by starting from the default, which gives a flat form with 2 browses. Added editable field from Purchases. Misbehaves if parent record has Notes showing in the browse.
Both links are one to many, no expressions.

Gren.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Still need help - Problem editing child.

Why not post a working model here, including a short text file outlining the exact sequence which leads to the problem?

-- tom

[Gren Brown]

RE: Still need help - Problem editing child.

Hi Tom, thanks for the offer to look at this.

The attached file SUBSCRIB.ZIP is a cut down version of the database that is giving the problem. It has only 100 records, the real database has 35000 records. The database is called Subscribers. If you run the form Main, select a record that has Notes (J C BEDFORD is an example), then select the Products tab and change one of the fields on the right, you will see that all other fields get blanked. This only happens on records with Notes. You will also see that there is a form called Test which has been created from the default form and this misbehaves in the same way.

The strange thing is that if I remove the Notes browse from the Notes tab on the Main form, then the Products can be edited properly.

The fields only misbehave if they are edited outside of the browse, so at the moment we have got over the problem by editing the Product fields within the browse, but this is inconvenient for the users.

If anyone has the time to look at this and make any suggestions it would be much appreciated, I really need to save face with the client now!

Gren.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Still need help - Problem editing child.

Gren,

I took a look. Do not see why this is happening and cannot explain it. Looks like something that should be reported to Alpha Software.

I found that if I changed the order of your child tables in the set the problem went away. Notes table becomes child1, and Purchases table becomes child2. So that's a fix, for now, but it's still troubling that it occurred in the first place. If you decide to adopt this strategy, check your table level event field rules for all three tables to make certain they still work as you expect. You do some things there which reference tables by their slot number in the set, so this may goof you up. By the way, this was strange to me. Personally, I try to avoid table level event field rules which make assumptions about the context in which data entry will always occur. References to slot numbers in the 'current' set seems particularly problematic. Makes things dicey if you ever need to work with the table outside of the set, or as part of a different set. The same things you are doing in these table level event field rule scripts I do at the form level, so the 'event' is not embedded in the table for all time, but is deployed only when needed.

One other thing. The name of your set bothers me. You call it 'Subs+Purch'. I try to avoid using punctuation or function names in the names I give to tables or objects in my own work. Here, I would much prefer SubsPurch, or even Subs_Purch. The plus symbol makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, but I can't tell you why, exactly. The set seems to functon just fine, and Alpha Five seems happy with it. Maybe it's just me... anyway, I thought I'd mention it.

Hope this helps.

-- tom

[Gren Brown]

RE: Still need help - Problem editing child.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for all the help. I have changed the order of the child tables as you suggested and everything is now working OK again.

Thanks also for the other comments about event field rules and set names. I shall consider these points in future developments, meanwhile I'm not going to change anything else on this unless it breaks again (it has run for two years until this problem occurred).

Thanks again,
Gren.