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Sport Injury

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    Sport Injury

    As a newstarter any hints and tips are most appreciated, like to create a record, reporting and purchases (vendor) db that can be used by most sports clubs within the district try to keep it simple with drop-down menus. Using some of the fine examples that came with a5.
    Question will this create problems in future when creating reports of incidents by reason, nature or causes including dates of incidents? Or is there a better way? Thank-you Peter

    #2
    Re: Sport Injury

    Question,

    Is this to be desktop or web based? You may find better responses in the appropriate area of this forum like v8 web or v9 desktop??

    Answer based on simpleness. A great deal more info from you could greatly enhance answers.

    You have a good template with the fillin form to go by. Only glanced at your tables. I usually take a jpg of the form and place it on a new report and work backwards to make a table/set and form(s) to fill it properly. Lookups/dropdowns are great if a section only can get one choice( or more can get quite complicated).

    Othes may see it differently, but many answers can help you solidify a method to whatever madness you wish to pursue.

    Not: Funny, I do a web page for the local Sharks(Pop-Warner football) and did a small app for their signups. All free, of course.

    Hope I helped you somehow.
    Dave Mason
    [email protected]
    Skype is dave.mason46

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Sport Injury

      Thanks Dave, it is a desktop application and sorry I placed it in the wrong forum, so when creating drop-down menu there should only be 1 choice to avoid conflicts later, well start again ..thanks

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Sport Injury

        you can put all the choices in a lookup table(regular table). this is udually done so the choices are always uniform. Then, you can make a field rule to let the user choose which one. You can have any number of lookup tables, so most of you areas can be made to fill in the right way. In the report, calculated fields can make the proper x or"" where needed.

        This is just a start and I know it, but one has to start somewhere.

        I wasn't being smart, just trying to help.
        Dave Mason
        [email protected]
        Skype is dave.mason46

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Sport Injury

          Peter,

          I took a quick look and have a couple of suggestions.
          The employee detail table also contains all of the injury details. Ok if a person only ever has one injury. If he has a second injury you would end up repeating all the employee details. I would break out the injury data into a separate table and link on the employee Id. I would also have a treater (is that a word?) table. When adding injury data you can then choose a treating person from the table. This way if a person is used more than once to treat players you don't need to repeatedly enter their info. This saves time but more importantly helps with data integrity as you only have the info stored once. If say the person's phone number changed you would only need to change it in one place and not have to go looking for all the records that person was used. Wether you store the treater type in the injury table or the treater table may be your preference but I would lean to having it in the treater table.

          You would tie these table together in one or more sets. Use as many sets as you need to view the data as you want. Tables can be used in more than one set. The parent table would be which ever you want as the major focus of the task at hand. So, if you want to focus on an injury make the injury table parent and add the supporting tables as needed ie employee and treater. Or you could have the employee table as parent and have an embedded browse listing all the injuries. You can still have the child record (injury) fields directly on a form tab as you have now to see the details.

          Here is a link that you may find useful on normalisation, which is about how one structures data. If you google that term you will get lots of hits.

          I noticed you have used numeric data type for some of the phone numbers and post codes. Don't. Even though they are numbers, as far as data is concerned they are character type. You won't need to do any math calcs with a postcode.:) This goes for the time field as well. When you search the help for time calc functions you will notice that there is provision for converting from character to time and visa-versa but not numeric. The only occasion numeric comes into play is when converting to seconds or adding a seconds value to a time. Many alpha users including myself also tend to use character type fields for the auto increment record id fields. But that is not essential.

          Do not use spaces in your table names. From the help
          Table and Field Names
          Alpha Five recommends that table names, field names, and paths to your files start with a letter (A-Z or a-z) and be composed of letters, numbers (0-9), and underscore (_) characters.
          Tim Kiebert
          Eagle Creek Citrus
          A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

          Comment


            #6
            Re: Sport Injury

            Originally posted by Peterqld View Post
            Thanks Dave, it is a desktop application and sorry I placed it in the wrong forum,
            No need to apologise for posting here. Since this design section was started it hasn't been used much. Your question is not really version specific and it is about design so this seems to me to be a logical place to ask. I think Dave just meant it may get better exposure in one of the forums of the current version.

            so when creating drop-down menu there should only be 1 choice to avoid conflicts later, well start again ..thanks
            Lookups can have as many choices as you want. You could have a table with a million records used as the basis of your lookup. (probably wouldn't be very practical though) I think Dave meant that dropdowns are a good method to present the lookup values if you only want to choose one of the values. If say you wanted to choose multiple reasons or conditions then a different control would be needed.
            Tim Kiebert
            Eagle Creek Citrus
            A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

            Comment


              #7
              Re: Sport Injury

              Tim and Dave, you advice and experience saves me a lot of headaches later by setting it up correctly...thank you both very much

              Comment


                #8
                Re: Sport Injury

                What version of alpha are you using? and how are you going to use it?

                Lookups can have as many choices as you want.
                the above is true and you can setup a conditional lookup. i didn't think it necessary for your use and can get a bit complex.

                i saw a need for a single lookup table to fill one field. you can have any number of lookup fields and tables with information to fill them. You can also set up a table with all kinds of data where you make a lookup and fill in a bucnh of fields at one time.
                example: put or look up the zipcode in a table and the state, county, city all get filled in the current table.

                i also saw a strong use of memo fields in you tables. May I suggest using them sparingly. If the data will not fit in a 255 test field, then a memo is a have to.

                to keep with simple(I like simple) if you will be adding data for one entity only, a table is good. If you are going to add more than one or 2 additionl peices of information about/for that entity, then a second table is good. then you can make them into a set where you can see, enter and report on all the information. set being

                client table linked by id to a happenings table one to many
                means 1 client to more than one happening.

                Then you can base your form on the set instead of the table most times.

                Tim(as always) gave very good naming advice. i try to keep folder names to 8 with no spaces or wildcard characters, tables the same, fields to 10, etc. I rarely use an underscore. the shorter the names, the less errors in coding.

                got this from another thread.
                Microsoft Windows uses ~ for file names more than 8 characters long. Back in the DOS days, you couldn't save a file with more than 8 characters long, still you can't but Windows creates a wrap-around for long names and uses tilde to show those with more than 8 characters long.
                I prefer numeric link fields like you have. I also like numeric autoincrement fields instead of character. some do the other.
                Last edited by DaveM; 04-21-2008, 04:44 PM.
                Dave Mason
                [email protected]
                Skype is dave.mason46

                Comment


                  #9
                  Re: Sport Injury

                  Using a5v8, Dave, but at the moment stuck on how to create a drop-menu as you mention in your previous post in relation (example causes or reason)that are on the pdf form as tick boxes with the option to add more if the user wants too, and thank-you for the info sofar... rgds Peter

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Re: Sport Injury

                    it is done from field rules when calling another table. see the pic below, it should give you a clue. The one I have leaves a little arrow on the right side of the field on a form or browse. It does not popup. If you click the arrow it does popup. It allows the user to add/edit zip codes as needed once popped up. You can have it pop up or not.
                    Dave Mason
                    [email protected]
                    Skype is dave.mason46

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Re: Sport Injury

                      Thanks Dave, for the example in creating dropdown fields and the reason why, also the points Tim made regarding the use of characters for id or other values used in time, phone numbers and spaces ect. preventing errors in reporting later, not quite sure on how to tie the tables together yet in the tab type form by linking other sets using the id from the personal information table...by not having all the other details as first set out, with treater table included (great idea Tim) so it wont duplicate for each each new entry relating to updates for the same person in future..thanks heaps grds Peter

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Re: Sport Injury

                        You can make as many sets as you want with alpha. the idea here is to have an id field in the main table that you can tie to other id fields in other tables.

                        example:

                        have a customer table named "customer" with an id field. Have a second table for his purchases. The "Purchases" table would also have an ID field to tie the customer to. If the customer would only ever purchase one item, then toy coud make your set with a one to one connection/link. if "Customer might make several or many "purchases", you would want a one to many link. Always the same id number would connect the various or single "purchase" to the "Customer"

                        this would be a set like:
                        Customer -----
                        --------Purchases

                        You could also reverse the set with a new name like
                        Purchases-----
                        ----- Customer
                        This would usually be for reports.

                        Sets hold no data, but you can make reports/ forms /etc on them that uses the data in the connected tables.
                        Dave Mason
                        [email protected]
                        Skype is dave.mason46

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Re: Sport Injury

                          Hi Dave and Tim, can't see the trees from the forrest, try to figure out a way to link the tables together when looking at the employee menu so it also shows the dates last injuried, reason, cause and treater. Instead getting all the data from the tables selected maybe looking at it the wrong way, thank-you grds Peter

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Re: Sport Injury

                            Peter,

                            You need a unique field in each table to link to.

                            If you have a client named joh doe, thats fine, but he needs an ID like a123 to connect him to his data(child tables) which would also have an ID like a123. Your set should be on the id where it coneccts the client ID to the children by ID. then when you go to john doe(also ID of a123), you will only see those records about him in the child tables.

                            Make better sense?
                            Dave Mason
                            [email protected]
                            Skype is dave.mason46

                            Comment

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