Set children records will not display correctly

[rmcgaffic]

I have created a form to display a parent record child records from three different tables, but only the first child record displays correctly. Any ideas of why the other two child tables won’t display?

I have defined a set with one parent table and three children tables: Person and Address, Telephone, and eAddress, respectively.

A one to many relationship is defined between the parent and each child.

Each of my child tables has a logical field “Default_indicator”, and one record in each child table has the indicator set to True. The Child tables in the set all are filtered for Default_indicator = True.

When I create a A5V9 default form with embedded browses, all records are correctly displayed as shown below. Note that while multiple records for each child table exist for the parent, only one record, flagged as default, is displayed. So far, so good.

When I create a custom form and display these same fields as type-in fields, I get the unexpected results below.

The parent record and the default child address record is displayed, but the default child telephone and default child eAddress records are not displayed.

Note that the cursor is on the field for telephone type above. Even when this field gets the focus, the desired record is not displayed.

Now, I type in just one letter in that field, and surprise, surprise, both the telephone type and telephone number are displayed, as shown in the third screen print.

I typed in “a” in the telephone type, and both Office and the phone number were displayed. When I placed the cursor on the eAddress type field, the Email was displayed. When I placed the curson on the Eaddress field the [email protected] address was displayed.

Anyone have any ideas of why all three children records won't display at the same time?

Thanks,
Bob McGaffic
Pittsburgh

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Bob, it might be possible to offer some suggestions with a copy of the app to explore. It's rare to see a type in field for field in a record from one-to-many linked child table. Your form is based on the set, and the field objects are automatically bound to the underlying tables. Without a browse object you won't be able to see and /or edit the child table records. Your form design swims against the Alpha Five current. If it's essential and you wish to spend the time overcoming the flow consider a form based on a dummy table populated with layout variables that you populate via xbasic. i.e. a form that's not bound to the underlying tables.

[ChopOMatic]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

I have something similar going on. I imported a large SQL database. After spending days creating and editing sets, and failing to have child data show up as it should, I decided last night to test the same relationships in Access. Boom. Perfect on the first try, data showing up exactly as it should. Way frustrating.

And there's no way I'll be able to share the app. It's confidential client data.

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Jerry, you probably know this but for the benefit of others who may find this thread later on let me mention that it's not necessary to post real data. In fact, it's often ill advised. What is necessary at times is to post a working copy of the database with dummy data.

-- tom

[ChopOMatic]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Thanks, Tom. On this one, however, I'd have to get client permission to even share the structure of the database. Tis the world I work in. Lots of NDAs and such.

[rmcgaffic]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Jerry and Tom,

I did this years ago in Microsoft Access, and it was trivial.

My problem is that my example works for one child record, but not the other two, and the settings for all tables are modeled the same. So the issue is not whether you can display a set's single child record in A5V9 -- you can, and I successfully did it with Address. It's just why can't I repeat this result with other child records for Telephone and E Address.

Why is this important? I have attached two examples from SAP to show what I am trying to emulate. Screen 1 shows a field to enter a phone number; note the yellow arrow icon for additional records which is equivalent to ... in my Alpha form.

The second screen shows that mutliple phone numbers are available, that the displayed one has the default radio button for field St (Status) checked. I plan to open a similar embedded browse form when the user clicks on my ... icon on my Alpha form.

SAP (sap.com) is the world's largest provider of Enterprise Resource Planning software (Oracle is 2nd place). Among others, CRM vendor Centerbase (centerbase.com) also takes this approach, which conserves screen real estate.

Actually my problem originally was using a combo box instead of a type in field for both telephone type and E Address type, and could not get the data to display correctly.

So I simplified my example, dropped the combo boxes and tried just a type-in fields, and found that A5V9 still won't display these records. Only if I attempt to type an entry in the fields are the "hidden" values suddenly displayed.

Why does the child record display work for the Address, but not Telephone or E Address?

I will try to post a cleaned up database, zipped, and would be greatful if either of you could take a quick look at it. I can't see that I'm doing anything wrong.

Bob McGaffic
Pittsburgh

[Tom Cone Jr]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Bob, I created my own example, and found the same behavior you describe. I note that pressing F5 to refresh the display will also cause the field values from the 2nd and 3rd linked child table to appear. I've submitted a bug report. -- tom

[Tim Kiebert]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Bob,

I have had the same behaviour as you describe and doing pretty much the same thing. ie displaying one primary or prefered record out of many

If you place an embeded browse on you form then the type in fields will behave. It must be that without the embeded browse the child records in the one to many relationship aren't being populated into the form properly.

Anyway I solved this by changing the links to one to one. Alpha treats a one to one link as almost being the same record.

[ChopOMatic]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Robert, I hope someone else can help, but I'm stuck with the same issue here.

[G Gabriel]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

In each of the fields based on the child table, in the OnArrive event put:
topparent.resynch()

More economically and if you follow a rigid tab pattern, put the above script in the first field only.

[G Gabriel]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

A much better (much more economic) script:
In the OnArrive Event of ALL child fields put:

if this.value=""
topparent.resynch()
end if

[ChopOMatic]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

G, this will only cure the ill if F5 causes the child records to display, correct? If they're not displaying at all, even with refreshes, it won't help, right?

Thx...

Chop/Jerry

[G Gabriel]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

I don't use any F's I am a mouse-person. Let me see what happens with F5.

Later:
Tested it, works with F5 too.

Jerry:
I have a feeling I am not understanding your question..
Without the script, the values did not display no matter what. With the script, they display fine.
I haven't really thought about whether F5 triggers any events, as I said, I never use any Function keys. Maybe they do, I will look into it. I would think they would trigger the same events as the mouse.

[Davidk]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

Interestingly... Clicking through records... if the 1st child record does not contain any data, then the 2nd child record does display. And, as you continue clicking through records, when the 1st child record does have data again, then the 2nd child record does not display.

I don't think it should be like this.

David

[ChopOMatic]

Re: Set children records will not display correctly

I apparently misunderstood, G. There was a discussion saying that using F5 to refresh the view sometimes caused the child records to show up. That is not the case here. They never show up. I'll give the script a whirl and see what happens, since I'd really prefer to work in A5 instead of Access.

As a workaround and built the relationships, ran a query to pull the needed data, exported the results, and pulled them into A5 as a single table. This approach will work for my immediate needs but as soon as I deliver these results I expect the client to decide that more fields of data are needed, etc., so I need to eliminate this cumbersome route.

Thx again...