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
Devcon 2020 Goes Virtual! LEARN MORE >

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

Validation rule help

Collapse
X
Collapse
 
  • Page of 1
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
Previous template Next
    #1

    Validation rule help

    This forum was the reason I purchased A5V4. And I'm now realizing that this was a good decision. I have a table with a field named Lot_Id and a field named Volume_Assigned. The Lot_Id field must be unique and is user entered. However, there is an instance where I want to allow the user to enter a duplicate Lot_Id. This exception would be when a previous record with the same Lot_Id has a value of
    Tags: None
    #2
    RE: Validation rule help

    Tried this on one of my tables, will try to translate.

    This would be a "custom validation" rule with whatever message you like:

    IF(Volume_Assigned
    There can be only one.

    Comment

      #3
      RE: Validation rule help

      Wouldn't this only evaluate Volume_Assigned

      Comment

        #4
        RE: Validation rule help

        Stan, where did you find the KEY_USER function? I looked it up in the help and couldn't find it. Is there a definitive source for this stuff?

        Comment

          #5
          RE: Validation rule help

          In the expression builder. When you hit the "smart button" to bring up the expression builder you normally see the

          ., !=, $ and the like. the more complex functions are below.

          It's Key_Unique(c tagname).

          Yes, this will only evaluate for the current record, but I thought that's what you said you wanted, to be able to enter a non-unique id if the value in the other field was less than 5.

          NO, I see what you want. You want to be able to "look back" to see if the "other" field
          There can be only one.

          Comment

            #6
            RE: Validation rule help

            Stan

            I found the KEY_UNIQUE function in the expression builder. There is absolutely no reference to it in the help docs. I've quite enjoyed using A5, but I wish somebody would clean up the documentation. It is always a search to find answers to my questions.

            There would only be one or two previous instances of the unique id. What we are doing is sending out samples which are assigned the unique id. If the customer wants to buy the bulk behind the sample, we need to send it with the same id. This stuff is one-off and tracking is required by FDA. Maybe I'll just alert the user that the id has been used. Will the custom validation let me enter the nonunique id after it alerts of its nonuniqueness (is that a word?)
            If not , I'll have to figure something else out I guess.

            Comment

              #7
              RE: Validation rule help

              Conditions:

              You are only concerned with letting the user enter another instance of an id if there is a previous id instance with a value less than 5 in the "other" field.

              You will allow repeated non-unique entries as long as that "
              There can be only one.

              Comment

                #8
                RE: Validation rule help

                Stan

                Thank you so much. One other question: What is .T. and where can I find reference to it?

                Comment

                  #9
                  RE: Validation rule help

                  if(expression ,value if true, value if false)


                  .T. is the logical value "true". The validation expression must evaluate to true or false. The middle part of the if() statement is the value to return if the first part evaluates to true, the last part is the value to return if the first part evaluates to false.

                  In English the statement says:

                  If the minimum value, in the field "other" for any record where the id is the same as in the current record, is less than 5, return true, otherwise return the value derived by evaluating the expression key_unique("id") which means is the current id unique (.T. or .F.).

                  The expression if() as written has three possible paths.

                  1. "other"
                  There can be only one.

                  Comment

                    #10
                    RE: Validation rule help

                    Stan

                    Helps alot. Your explanation has been very informative and appreciated. I evaluated several different database programs before I purchased this one and as I said before, this forum was what pushed me to this program. I've done pretty well flying solo for awhile but always knew I could depend on guys like you if I ever got stuck. Thank you again.

                    Regards,
                    Chris

                    Comment

                      #11
                      RE: Validation rule help

                      Let us know if this accomplishes what you want to do or if we need to pursue another avenue.
                      There can be only one.

                      Comment

                        #12
                        RE: Validation rule help

                        I already plunked it in and ran it. Works like a charm.

                        Comment

                          #13
                          RE: Validation rule help

                          Well, that's one thing I got right today.

                          Glad to be of help.
                          There can be only one.

                          Comment

                            #14
                            RE: Validation rule help

                            Chris,

                            KEY_UNIQUE is not in the Help docs because it was added with one of the updates after V4.00. It is documented in one of the Readme files. In fact, the V4.03 Readme includes all the info from the previous updates.

                            Also, I share your concern over finding things in the Help files. Because of that, I create my own A5v4 Help file which has better search capability an links to related functions. It is mostly designed to assist with Xbasic programming but includes all Commands, Xbasic functions, and a lot of misc info. All the info is already in the Help or Readme files - my program was created with a lot of copy and paste.

                            I originally offered it on a "send me a small donation" basis and a number of users took me up on it so I don't feel it would be appropriate to offer it for free now. If you're interested, e-mail me. The "donation" doesn't have to be very big. (I didn't make enough to cover 5% of the time spent but it was nice to know some people placed value on it.)

                            BTW, if you click the "If someone posts ...." box on this message board, it will work for any post to that message string. You don't need to click the box each time you add a comment to the same string.

                            Comment

                            Previous template Next
                            Working...
                            X