Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

[Charlain]

I'm having problems getting reliable search results when I use a Drop Down
list in my Grid Search and need some help.

I have the Drop Down List set to dynamic. It show a list of Company Names for the user to select from for their search.

Sometimes, when a Company is selected it works properly and the grid contains only those records in the grid that match the company that was selected from the Drop Down List.

Sometimes, especially if there is only one record for a company, it will return several different records instead of the only record containing that company. The company will be somewhere in the list of records returned, but it is not the only one.

Can anyone offer any insight into what am I doing wrong?

Also, is there any way to offer a list to the user that shows the Company Names, but when it does the search it uses the Company_ID number associated with the company to return the results? I've tried setting this in the "Choices" for the Drop Down box, but I always get 0 Records found when I put the Company_ID as the "result to store."

Thanks.

[Charlain]

Re: Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

I figured out part of the problem. I had the Search Type set to 2, which is "Is Contained In". Every time I picked a company from the Drop Down List that had the Company Name with LLC at the end it showed ALL the companies in the database that had LLC at the end.

I tried changing the Search Type to 1, which is "Exact Match (not case sensitive)" but when I did that, it always gave me 0 Records Found.

I finally tried Search Type 3, which is "Starts With" and it works.

So, I can't help wondering:

If you are searching for "ABC Company, LLC" why does "Is Contained In" return:

ABC Company, LLC
XYZ Company, LLC
My Enterprises, LLC???

LLC is in all of them, but "ABC Company, LLC" is not in the other two.

And if you're searching for "ABC Company, LLC" and "ABC Company, LLC" is in the database, why can't it find it when using "Exact Match?"

Can anybody explain or point me to a reference for the different types of Searches?

BTW, I had alltrim(Company) in the Display Field Value and alltrim(Company) in the Stored Field Value in the Drop Down search properties.

[MikeC]

Re: Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

Charlain,

Just a "wild" guess but it sure seems like this search uses the same criteria as the Quick Search described for grids in the help file where a comma denotes a separator between different words to search for.

This then makes perfect sense for the results you got for "Is Contained In".

As far as the Exact Match search....what does it find??--I would think it would find nothing as the search criteria is two words/phrases and Exact Match is for a single word/phrase.

Just how I see it-- not knowing really or even able to confirm--I do not have a web app started yet.

But am sure if I am too far off base a guru will come along and correct me!! :)


Here are the links to the help docs I found---

http://support.alphasoftware.com/alp...pabilities.htm

http://support.alphasoftware.com/alp...ick_Search.htm

[Charlain]

Re: Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

Mike,

I see what you mean --

I was thinking that the search would just include the literal text that was picked from the dynamic Drop Down List. It never even crossed my mind that the comma was telling it to also look for LLC!

Thanks for the reply.

[Fulltimer]

Re: Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

Mike,

I see what you mean --

I was thinking that the search would just include the literal text that was picked from the dynamic Drop Down List. It never even crossed my mind that the comma was telling it to also look for LLC!

Thanks for the reply.

I recently ran into the "comma" problem for searches because my app deals with law offices and their company names often contain commas.

Example:
Law Offices of Little, Lang and Bittle

Selecting their name from a drop down field in the "Search Part" would give me zero find. If I removed the "comma" the record could be found. Putting it back in, gave me a no find. It is definitely the comma that is causing the problem.

I would consider this a rather significant "bug" in the search part. My only viable work around at this point was to change the "Search Style" to number 3. This is a "Starts with" search. Normally this would give me the result I wanted (one record).

However in my above example if I ALSO happen to have a office with the name of "Lang and Bittle" the search might return both the office(s) starting with "Lang" as well as "Lang and Bittle".

It's a shame you can't really rely 100% on a search knowing these quirks. Alpha needs to somehow distinguish between a comma that is part of the data input and the comma that is used to separate search criteria.

Tom

[Jberry]

Re: Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

Just bumped into this on V10 so I guess it is still with us from V8. I will change my search to 3 (starts with) and hope it works. The problem using that method is that if a user doesn't notice some other records in the mix, looks down at the totals and reports those then they will be incorrect. Is there some other work-around?

Thanks

[MikeC]

Re: Need help with Grid Search & Drop Down List

Hi John,
All really depends upon your data---there has to be some delimiter to use that is consistent and unique. I really cannot comment on Tom's statement of

Alpha needs to somehow distinguish between a comma that is part of the data input and the comma that is used to separate search criteria

I run across this more often than I would like when dealing with client's data that has been allowed to be entered haphazardly or in such a way that searching or grouping the data is extremely, if not impossible, to accomplish.

Give us a sample of your data and maybe something can be come up with that would cure your ails....and that is what it takes many times---a specific work-around for the data at hand as no one method could work for all situations (that I know of at least! :) )