Updating the Alpha way ??

[Rich Merritt]

Hi,
Just trying to understand how to do things the 'Alpha way' compared to the tools I've used in the past, so I'd appreciate some help please (a kind of quick start!)

This is a ficticious scenario but hopefully it'll explain what I want to do...

Say I had a table which recorded the quantity of a certain item on stock and its location (on a shelf in a warehouse) and I wanted to update the location in this table, plus record its movement in a seperate table which logged the items' movement history - what would be the best way to do this in Alpha?

The Stock table would have the following fields;
StockID (code for the item)
ItemDescription (name of the item)
Qty
CurrentLocation (shelf number)

The StockMovements table would have the following fields;
StockID
MovementDate (date it was moved)
OldLocation
NewLocation

I wouldn't expect the user to display the Stock form and overtype the CurrentLocation field with the new location to modify that record, then create a new record in a form over the StockMovements table, entering the date, StockID, Old and NewLocations. I want to do both things (update a record in one table and create a new record in another table) from one 'screen'.

The way I'd do this in Dataease would be to display a data-entry form where the user would type in the StockID code, the form would display the matching ItemDescription so the user could verify they'd entered the correct StockID code. The form would also display a field allowing (requiring) the user to enter the new location that the item was moved to. Therefore the db would update the CurrentLocation in the Stock table and enter a new movement record in the StockMovements table (StockID,CurrentDate,OldLocation,NewLocation).

I started by trying to create a form in Alpha, but do all forms have to be based on a table?
I also looked at creating an operation, then choosing the 'Update records' genie, but it didn't seem to offer what I'm looking for.

As I said this is just an example to show what I want to do, so I just need to know how I'd go about doing this sort of thing with Alpha (which tools/genies etc).

TIA,
Rich

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Updating the Alpha way ??

There is a similar process that happens in AlphaSports when you invoice a product. The invoiced quantity is posted to the products stock quantity field (via subtraction). Take a look at the field rules for the invoice items table.

The same sort of thing could be used to record the location changes.

[Rich Merritt]

Re: Updating the Alpha way ??

Thanks Stan,
That's helped a lot and I've used it to create the kind of functionality I was looking for. To do it I created my StockMovements table and set a lookup on the 'OldLocation' field in this table so it got the current location from the field in the Stock table, then created a 'Replace' posting choice in the NewLocation field in the StockMovements table to post the NewLocation into the matching record in Stocks.
Seems to work OK, so is this the way you would recommend?

Also, do ALL forms in Alpha HAVE to be based on a table?

Thanks for your help.

Rich

[Al Buchholz]

Re: Updating the Alpha way ??

Also, do ALL forms in Alpha HAVE to be based on a table?

Rich

Yes.

You can make a table with no records, or one record and based forms on it, though it is in name only. This is one technique for building menu forms. I usually have a single record table that holds system wide values and is used to build menu forms from. Works for me...(Copied that idea from others a long time ago....)

You can also use xdialog to build dialogs that are independant of tables. I'd suggest using the action scripting to start building an xdialog and modify it from that start.

[Stan Mathews]

Re: Updating the Alpha way ??

Seems to work OK, so is this the way you would recommend?

Also, do ALL forms in Alpha HAVE to be based on a table?

Thanks for your help.

Rich

I don't use this sort of thing, just know how it can be done, can't advise.

Forms are based on tables. The table doesn't have to hold any significant data. Can be a one record one field "dummy" table to hold buttons to drive other processes.

Check out xdialog for table free user interaction.

[Mike Wilson]

Re: Updating the Alpha way ??

Rich,
I don't know how alphasport does it but I do this kind of thing through a xdialog (see example). A choice to consider.

EDIT: This is what Al was referring to.

[Rich Merritt]

Re: Updating the Alpha way ??

Rich,
I don't know how alphasport does it but I do this kind of thing through a xdialog (see example). A choice to consider.

EDIT: This is what Al was referring to.

Thanks everyone for your help and special thanks to Mike for your example of the xdialog - that's really helped a lot and does exactly what I wanted. Now I'll just have try to use the same ideas in the real app (when I start - I'm just evaluating the product at the moment).
I'll probably have a load more questions as I try different things in Alpha.

Thanks again.

Rich