Alpha Software Mobile Development Tools:   Alpha Anywhere    |   Alpha TransForm subscribe to our YouTube Channel  Follow Us on LinkedIn  Follow Us on Twitter  Follow Us on Facebook

Announcement

Collapse

The Alpha Software Forum Participation Guidelines

The Alpha Software Forum is a free forum created for Alpha Software Developer Community to ask for help, exchange ideas, and share solutions. Alpha Software strives to create an environment where all members of the community can feel safe to participate. In order to ensure the Alpha Software Forum is a place where all feel welcome, forum participants are expected to behave as follows:
  • Be professional in your conduct
  • Be kind to others
  • Be constructive when giving feedback
  • Be open to new ideas and suggestions
  • Stay on topic


Be sure all comments and threads you post are respectful. Posts that contain any of the following content will be considered a violation of your agreement as a member of the Alpha Software Forum Community and will be moderated:
  • Spam.
  • Vulgar language.
  • Quotes from private conversations without permission, including pricing and other sales related discussions.
  • Personal attacks, insults, or subtle put-downs.
  • Harassment, bullying, threatening, mocking, shaming, or deriding anyone.
  • Sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, or otherwise discriminatory jokes and language.
  • Sexually explicit or violent material, links, or language.
  • Pirated, hacked, or copyright-infringing material.
  • Encouraging of others to engage in the above behaviors.


If a thread or post is found to contain any of the content outlined above, a moderator may choose to take one of the following actions:
  • Remove the Post or Thread - the content is removed from the forum.
  • Place the User in Moderation - all posts and new threads must be approved by a moderator before they are posted.
  • Temporarily Ban the User - user is banned from forum for a period of time.
  • Permanently Ban the User - user is permanently banned from the forum.


Moderators may also rename posts and threads if they are too generic or do not property reflect the content.

Moderators may move threads if they have been posted in the incorrect forum.

Threads/Posts questioning specific moderator decisions or actions (such as "why was a user banned?") are not allowed and will be removed.

The owners of Alpha Software Corporation (Forum Owner) reserve the right to remove, edit, move, or close any thread for any reason; or ban any forum member without notice, reason, or explanation.

Community members are encouraged to click the "Report Post" icon in the lower left of a given post if they feel the post is in violation of the rules. This will alert the Moderators to take a look.

Alpha Software Corporation may amend the guidelines from time to time and may also vary the procedures it sets out where appropriate in a particular case. Your agreement to comply with the guidelines will be deemed agreement to any changes to it.



Bonus TIPS for Successful Posting

Try a Search First
It is highly recommended that a Search be done on your topic before posting, as many questions have been answered in prior posts. As with any search engine, the shorter the search term, the more "hits" will be returned, but the more specific the search term is, the greater the relevance of those "hits". Searching for "table" might well return every message on the board while "tablesum" would greatly restrict the number of messages returned.

When you do post
First, make sure you are posting your question in the correct forum. For example, if you post an issue regarding Desktop applications on the Mobile & Browser Applications board , not only will your question not be seen by the appropriate audience, it may also be removed or relocated.

The more detail you provide about your problem or question, the more likely someone is to understand your request and be able to help. A sample database with a minimum of records (and its support files, zipped together) will make it much easier to diagnose issues with your application. Screen shots of error messages are especially helpful.

When explaining how to reproduce your problem, please be as detailed as possible. Describe every step, click-by-click and keypress-by-keypress. Otherwise when others try to duplicate your problem, they may do something slightly different and end up with different results.

A note about attachments
You may only attach one file to each message. Attachment file size is limited to 2MB. If you need to include several files, you may do so by zipping them into a single archive.

If you forgot to attach your files to your post, please do NOT create a new thread. Instead, reply to your original message and attach the file there.

When attaching screen shots, it is best to attach an image file (.BMP, .JPG, .GIF, .PNG, etc.) or a zip file of several images, as opposed to a Word document containing the screen shots. Because Word documents are prone to viruses, many message board users will not open your Word file, therefore limiting their ability to help you.

Similarly, if you are uploading a zipped archive, you should simply create a .ZIP file and not a self-extracting .EXE as many users will not run your EXE file.
See more
See less

"Previous values" field rule.

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    "Previous values" field rule.

    Does anyone use the lookup method in the field rules called "Previous"?

    This is NOT the Previous() function - see attached screen shot.

    In the past (older versions of A5), this returned all previous values that existed in that field. I just tested an app in V8 then in V9 and in both cases it only showed me one value.

    Moments Later:
    I went back and checked one more time in V9 and this time it's working. But it still doesn't work in V8. These are exactly the same applications except the V8 version was copied to a new V9 folder for testing only. Apparently this didn't work in v8 so now I have to "roll my own". (Times like this make me really angry with A5 and/or computers!:()

    #2
    Re: "Previous values" field rule.

    Cal,
    Something else may be going on as I have used this type of lookup in version 8 without problems.
    Mike
    __________________________________________
    It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
    It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
    Henry David Thoreau
    __________________________________________



    Comment


      #3
      Re: "Previous values" field rule.

      Thanks. Based on your comment I went back and tried more tests.

      I'm not sure exactly what I did originally but I was only working with about 3 records for my testing. (It's a new app.)

      Anyway, I finally figured out that there is a difference in how v8 and v9 work. In v8, the "previous values" will never show you the value in the last record. In v9 it does.

      I have to assume that the only record that was different in my initial tests was the last record so I recreated it. See the attachment and note that I'm entering a new record. However, the last record in the table - the one immediately before the new record - does not show up in the list of previous values. Oops!

      Of course, if the same value was in another record besides the last, it would show up. In my scenario, the value in the last record is a unique value but I want to use it again in the next record I'm entering.

      So, I'm back to rolling my own for v8 because this is a very real possibility.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: "Previous values" field rule.

        I cannot replicate your results---all my previous value fields work without your problems....could be I am not creating the same scenario......

        Just hate to see you have to create something unnecessarily.
        Mike
        __________________________________________
        It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.
        It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see.
        Henry David Thoreau
        __________________________________________



        Comment


          #5
          Re: "Previous values" field rule.

          Hi Cal,

          I'm surprised that you would contemplate using "Previous Values" from field rules. When you know that "Joe's Bar and Grill" could be typed in as "Joes Bar and Grill" and this would be a different value, when in fact it should not be.

          Just an observation from my part as I know how you like to keep things in good order.

          Just done a quick test in V8. Started new record, added my name to the Previous value field. Saved record. Started new record, my name is on dropdown, in the correct order. Seems to be working OK over here. Give the computer a good kick.
          Last edited by Keith Hubert; 03-19-2009, 02:40 AM.
          Regards
          Keith Hubert
          Alpha Guild Member
          London.
          KHDB Management Systems
          Skype = keith.hubert


          For your day-to-day Needs, you Need an Alpha Database!

          Comment


            #6
            Re: "Previous values" field rule.

            Originally posted by Keith Hubert View Post
            Give the computer a good kick.
            With pleasure! Can I give it another one for you?

            A bit later after thinking about Keith's comment and running more tests....

            Maybe this is why Selwyn doesn't seem to like my bug reports - I'm really good at finding weird situations that cause problems. And, of course, if nobody else finds them then they aren't worth fixing. Think about Keith's comment regarding spelling the names with and without the apostrophe then take a good look at the attachment here compared to the one above and you will see the bug in v8 that was either (a) fixed and not document in v9 (at least I couldn't find any documentation on it) or (b) fixed accidentally in v9. Note that this apostrophe issue is not an issue except when it happens in the last record and the field in that record is unique.


            As for Keith's question, I'm really not sure what's best in this situation. There is a very high probability that much of the data in this field will be unique which means that it would be a pain to force the user to add most end-users to another table before entering them here. The good thing about the Previous Value rule is its "type ahead" feature. Unfortunately, that's not a guarantee against "non-duplicate duplicates" but I think it may be an acceptable compromise. This question will definitely be discussed with the customer before final implementation.

            BTW: Thanks to both of you for your comments. There's no doubt they helped solve the problem - or at least answer the question. I guess the likely hood of this being an issue is small relative to the advantages of the type-ahead feature.
            Last edited by CALocklin; 03-19-2009, 10:05 AM.

            Comment

            Working...
            X