Age function

[netgeorger]

New newbe Age function
Ok, I know you all will be gawfawed at my ignorance I have very little experience working with computer languages such as basic. I have been digging through all of the examples and tutorials but evidently what I am accustomed to in Lotus Approach is different here or I have missed something.

Fighting the Learning Curve.

I want to use data input into fields by the user to be processed and show up to be stored in another field using a function. (This is the fundamental aspect of programming data bases.)

Approach will let you reference the field inside the function and the field you want the data
to show up in. I don't see how to do that here. It looks like I have to make variables to get the info into the expressions or functions. I don't know.

So I have Three fields and they are type-in-fields on the form they reflect the respective fields in the table. I have a Form_date field (Date) and a Birth_date field (Date) I made these two fields smart calendar fields. I also have the Age_as_of_form_date field (Numeric) or should this be a text or a date field?

The user has to supply the form date and the birth date. Now I want the age of the person to show up in the Age_as_of_form_date field. Seems simple enough and Alpha's help files give examples of this kind of thing using dates over and over but basically they show the info already written into the function. I am interested in making it dynamic. I don't see how to get the info from one field to another. I found the Age Function.
(I don't know of any programming language that has an age function.) So great! The syntax I see in the code editor on the actions script is age(d dob [,d asofdate ]). Age() is supposed to return a numeric value but the input I have is date value. So do I have to change the date value to numeric to use the function? How do I do this? I have tried to make variables but I get either invalid or incomplete expression errors or that it doesn't evaluate to numeric.
A bit lost.

Any insight will be truly appreciated
Thank you George R. Kenney

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Age function

"" Now I want the age of the person to show up in the Age_as_of_form_date field""

George,

Once you have the date of birth in the table, there's usually no reason to store the current age in a table field. If you wanted to show the current age on a form, just define a form level calculated field in your form layout, using an expression that will compute the current age based on the current record's date of birth. The same thing can be done in report layouts. Doing it this way you don't have the overhead of keeping a record in the table up to date, but your users can see the actual age even if they only run the report or check the record once a year.

-- tom

[richkerr]

RE: Age function

Hi George:

Here is how I use the age function in my application. Just use the birthdate field with the age function:

age(Datofbirth)

I use this as the syntax for a calculated field. If for some reason you want to store the age in a table field, you could use XBasic or the Action Scripting to set the value of the field equal to that expression above.

I have had to convert a number of applications from Lotus Approach to Alpha, and keep in mind, the Action Scripting tool in Alpha is far more robust than the Macro tool in Approach. It is a great way to learn how certain functions should be written in XBasic.

My experience with converting macros to LotusScript in Approach is that Approach often leaves you with scripts that have errors. The macro to script translator fails to convert all steps of a complex macro properly. This is not the case with Alpha 5. Any "Action Script" (Macro) that you convert to XBasic will be a clean conversion and will work the same as script as it did as a Macro.

Rich Kerr

[netgeorger]

RE: Age function

Thank you for your quick response on this
I will need to store the age of the client as I use the database for document creation specifically I create wills via the WordPerfect data tool merge. This means I also have to change numeric and date data to text data because the tool is really only some kind of text importer. But anyway my real goal was to learn how to manipulate the fields and the functions as I have to do a lot of it to get the results I want. I have to change words based on gender plulality or possessive state and make assignments to family members storing many names all of which need to have all kinds of personal and financial data ready to be used in a form. The goal is to automate form production and without WordPerfect I don't think it could be done I mean in some documents you have to place the same address at the beginning and then at the end. Thats easy to do in a data base but tricky in a merge. I have yet to explore the Letter capability of Alpha But mind you I have done all this in Aproach its just that I kept running into as you said the overhead the limits 255 fields and record size of 4,096 bytes. I don't think that Approach is ever going to be really improved or be used on the internet as a database I mean from just what I have seen so far there isn't anyway to compare the products.

[netgeorger]

RE: Age function

Thank you Rich
I'll try that. So I need to make a calculated field and put the formula in it referencing the field on the other side of the equal sign such as
Age_As_Of_Field_date=Age(birth_date)

Its true the so called macro translator was never recomended by anyone. I think that was the last gasp at giving Approach a new tool. Ibm pretty much back shelved lotus products and I started looking around when they came up with this Pay for Service upgrades. But mostly I started looking for a data base that could have more than 255 fields in a record which seems to be the norm in the database industry.

[Steve Andrews]

RE: Age function

George,

Beware that upon setting it up as a calculated field in your table, this age field will reflect the age as of the date that the record was last saved or the date when a "recalculate field rules" operation was performed (whichever is later).

For example, if you entered a record a few years ago and have neither resaved that record nor run the "recalculate field rules" operation, the age field will be understated by two years. That is the advantage of having it calculated on the fly as Tom suggested. Not having used the WordPerfect data merge tool myself, I'm not sure about the extent to which the field can be avoided as such.

Steve

[richkerr]

RE: Age function

George:

When you start setting up the calculated field in Alpha, you enter that formula in the expression box in the dialog box which appears.

It is similar to the field definition process in Approach, where you define a field as calculated, and you enter the formala/expression in the box below the list of fields in a table... well in Alpha, you can display the Drag/Drop list, and at the top of the list, one of the options is New Calculated field (or something close to that). When you drag that item onto your form, you will be prompted to enter the expression for the calculated field.

I used Lotus Approach for quite a while, and was disappointed when IBM announced they would no longer support the product. I have found though, that Alpha is far more robust, and the Action Scripting tool provides a huge amount of functionality... the XBasic language is also far more robust than Lotus Script. There are ,amu useful functions in XBasic that just don't exist in Lotus Script.

Rich

[netgeorger]

RE: Age function

Ok I'm making progress because now I can get the age. But
for the life of me I can't seem to get the formula of the
expresson to work the way they say it will in code editor
Age( d dob[,d asofdate])

I mean the problem is that I believe the date here is set
to the system date so next year the dead person will be
a year older if someone taps on the field on the form but what I want is this to work the way they say it does. I want to set the end date being the date I started the will or the form date. Once I figured out how to put the name of the field in the formula I could get the equation to work the way you have told me in the code editor. But every time I start to insert the second half or what I think is the second half of the equation it tells me its invalid. I mean am I reading this syntax wrong or what?
Thanks Again I am start to see how it goes here.

[netgeorger]

RE: Age function

Thanks Steve
That is the problem I thought if the age function is tied to the system date I want it tied to the form date as
dead people don't grow older. There are other ways to do this as Alpha has a whole different means of accomplishing things. The formula in the code editor supposedly will allow me to do exactly what I want to do which is set the birth date and the end date Age( d dob[,d asofdate]) the problem is when I slip the name of the field in there it goes Age(birth_date) perfect I get the age. But if I add
Age(birth_date[,form_date]) it tells me its invalid so I must have a syntax error or the formula doesn't work that way.

[Steve Andrews]

RE: Age function

George,

I have no problems using the second parameter:

dim form_date as D
dim dob as D
dob = {04/29/51}
form_date = {01/01/2003}

?age(dob)
= 54.000000

?age(dob,form_date)
= 51.000000

Are both of your parameters date type? If, say, your form date field were a character field you would have to convert it to a date before using it in the age() function.

Steve

[Steve Andrews]

RE: Age function

George,

I have no problems using the second parameter:

dim form_date as D
dim dob as D
dob = {04/29/51}
form_date = {01/01/2003}

?age(dob)
= 54.000000

?age(dob,form_date)
= 51.000000

Are both of your parameters date type? If, say, your form date field were a character field you would have to convert it to a date before using it in the age() function.

Steve

[G Gabriel]

RE: Age function

George:
"Age() is supposed to return a numeric value but the input I have is date value. So do I have to change the date value to numeric to use the function?"

The input and output of a function do not have to be of the same type. That goes for any function.

"I will need to store the age of the client as I use the database for document creation "
You do not need to store any calc fields in order to be able to use it later.

"I create wills via the WordPerfect data tool merge"
That's fine, but might not be necessary as you could do the same using reports or letter, which is a better way to go.

"so next year the dead person will be a year older"
Yes and No. :
Yes: Age() function takes two parameters: starting date (DOB) and ending date. If you do not enter the ending date, the function will calculate the age as of today's date.
No: the dead person will not be a year older if you enter the ending date in your age() function.

Gabe

[netgeorger]

RE: Age function

Thanks Gabe for you reply
I keep trying to input the second parameter but it doesn't seem to work the syntax they give me in the code editor is Age(d dob[,d AsOfDate]) so what I keep doing is I select the function then I insert the field name and type in the bracket [ comma and insert the second field name the last bracket and closure parenthesis. At the bottom of the code editor it is telling me invalid or incomplete expression. when I go ahead it tells me it doesn't return a numeric value. If I eliminate all but
Age(Birth_Date) I get the age but I think it is tied as you pointed out to the system date. I suppose I don't understand the syntax of the second paramater.
I haven't had a chance to see what I can do with the forms
in Alpha 5 yet but I hope there is no limit to the size of the letters as some of wills can be 40 to 100 pages.
The lawyers are very paticular about the letter style etc. so I can see what happens but I was pleased to find a perfect discription of how to run the WordPerfect Data tool
in Alpha five under Letters. Not even wordperfect has such
a clear description.

[netgeorger]

RE: Age function

Steve
ah never used this method I just used the code editor but I ll try it out
thanks

[Steve Andrews]

RE: Age function

George,

You do NOT type in the bracket ("["). The bracket is there to let you know that it is an optional parameter (having a default value in case you do not include it).

Steve