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Weights and Measures

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    Weights and Measures

    Has anyone ever done a site with mixed Metric and standard weights and measures?

    For instance, customer 1 wants lengths to be in inches but weight in kilos.

    Customer 2 operates all in metric

    Customer 3 does temperature in fahrenheit, lengths in cm and weights in oz and lbs.

    Grids and dialogs will have to accommodate choices as will report and even reporting setups. Some reports will even cross customer boundaries so I'll have to calculate inches plus centimeters (converted of course) if the report receiver wants output in inches.

    I certainly have some ideas about what I want and need to do, but thought I'd see if anyone had already dealt with this and has ideas. hints, lessons learned (other than "Don't try this at home"), that sort of thing.
    -Steve
    sigpic

    #2
    Re: Weights and Measures

    You probably have the same thoughts as me -- if you have a lot of fields and offer complete flexibility for data entry, it gets pretty hairy
    • Record exactly what the user types in rather than a converted value and make that field a floating point
    • a table by customer by field that said what measurement will be used each entry. That same table has to show the Min and Max values for each field, and possibly number of precision points, to be used for data validation. Their selection comes from a lookup to a Measurement table which also includes the symbol to use to indicate that measurement.
    • a little run time Label magic to ensure the field label includes what measurement to use when entering that value
    • validation if possible to ensure what they enter is within an allowed range. E.g. if the lower limit is "freezing" then Celsius=0, Fahrenheit =32 if Kelvin=273.15 and Nords=401.
    • avoid re-calculation. The data-entered values should be stored as typed in, not converted.
    • It would be oh-so-nice if your Conversion table (how to convert F to C) was a web services rather than your own table.
    Last edited by Steve Wood; 04-02-2012, 07:25 AM.
    Steve Wood
    See my profile on IADN

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Weights and Measures

      Steve - I've found a whole other argument somewhere in googling that suggested all data be stored either in metric or imperial, and you make any necessary conversion on the way in or out.

      For the sake of argument, why not do this? It will especially help with cross-company reporting where I want to find, say, the average weight of a particular widget across companies.

      In my case, we can specify that all volumes are liters, all lengths are inches, all weights are lbs and all temperatures are centigrade. With that in hand, I can use the grids' Server side events to record everything in metric, but allow data entry and data presentation in the measurement of that company's choice. Four session variables and a few small functions should server nicely.

      Again - I haven't detailed this and there might be a really big point that I'm missing but this seems pretty clean to me.

      Further thought: for purposes of integrity I could also keep a field of their original input in case there's any need to verify or audit the conversions.
      -Steve
      sigpic

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Weights and Measures

        I'm in the midst of doing that right now. Little different that what you want, but many of the same issues. Here are the fields from my table:
        `VALUE_ANSWER` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `VALUE_ANSWER_UNITS` varchar(10) DEFAULT NULL,
        `STD_UNITS_METRIC` varchar(10) DEFAULT NULL,
        `STD_DECIMALS_METRIC` tinyint(4) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
        `VALUE_ANSWER_STD_METRIC` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `STD_UNITS_ENGLISH` varchar(10) DEFAULT NULL,
        `STD_DECIMALS_ENGLISH` tinyint(4) unsigned NOT NULL DEFAULT '0',
        `VALUE_ANSWER_STD_ENG` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `LOWER_LIMIT_METRIC` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `UPPER_LIMIT_METRIC` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `LOWER_LIMIT_ENGLISH` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `UPPER_LIMIT_ENGLISH` decimal(11,4) DEFAULT NULL,
        `CONVERSION_FUNCTION_NAME` varchar(24) DEFAULT NULL,

        The most important field is the CONVERSION_FUNCTION_NAME. That tells me if the field is length, temperature, area, volume, pressure and so on. The Value...fields are what the user enters, with the VALUE_ANSWER_UNITS a dropdown of acceptable units, for xample, no feet and inches. The STD_UNITS... are the metric and english units to convert into with upper and lower limits (I just check if the two are diferent, then appliy limits, else ignore) and the decimals tells me how many decimals to display.

        Then, I have a conversion functions for each set of units, for example
        FUNCTION Conv_Length AS C (Answer AS C, AnswerUnits AS C, MetricUnits AS C, MetricDecimals AS N, EnglishUnits AS C, EnglishDecimals AS N )
        dim vAnswer as n
        dim vTmp as n
        dim vMetric as c
        dim vEnglish as c

        vAnswer = Convert_Type(Answer,"N")
        AnswerUnits = lower(AnswerUnits)
        MetricUnits = lower(MetricUnits)
        EnglishUnits = lower(EnglishUnits)

        IF AnswerUnits=="in"
        IF MetricUnits=="mm"
        vTmp=vAnswer * 25.4
        vMetric = alltrim(str(vTmp,10,MetricDecimals))
        ELSE IF MetricUnits=="m"
        vTmp=vAnswer * .0254
        vMetric = alltrim(str(vTmp,10,MetricDecimals))
        END IF
        IF EnglishUnits=="in"
        vTmp=vAnswer
        vEnglish = alltrim(str(vTmp,10,EnglishDecimals))
        ELSE IF EnglishUnits=="ft"
        vTmp=vAnswer / 12
        vEnglish = alltrim(str(vTmp,10,EnglishDecimals))
        END IF
        END IF
        IF AnswerUnits=="ft"
        IF MetricUnits=="mm"
        vTmp=vAnswer * 304.8
        vMetric = alltrim(str(vTmp,10,MetricDecimals))
        ELSE IF MetricUnits=="m"
        ...
        END IF

        Conv_Length = vMetric+"|"+vEnglish
        END FUNCTION

        Then in the CanUpdateRecord event is
        ' convert units (limits are checked in field validation)
        vUnitList = "COUNTUNITS,MONEYUNITS,PROPORTIONUNITS,PERCENTUNITS,PPMUNITS,ELECTRICALUNITS"
        vFn = alltrim(DataSubmitted.CONVERSION_FUNCTION_NAME)
        if len(vFn) > 3
        if is_one_of(vFn,vUnitList)
        DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER_STD_ENG = DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER
        DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER_STD_METRIC = DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER
        else
        vAnswer = DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER
        vUnits = DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER_UNITS
        vMU = DataSubmitted.STD_UNITS_METRIC
        vMD = val(DataSubmitted.STD_DECIMALS_METRIC)
        vEU = DataSubmitted.STD_UNITS_ENGLISH
        vED = val(DataSubmitted.STD_DECIMALS_ENGLISH)
        end if
        if vFn = "LENGTHUNITS"
        vValues = Conv_Length(vAnswer,vUnits,vMU,vMD,vEU,vED)
        elseif vFn = "PRESSUREUNITS"
        vValues = Conv_Pressure(vAnswer,vUnits,vMU,vMD,vEU,vED)
        elseif vFn = "TEMPERATUREUNITS"
        vValues = Conv_Temperature(vAnswer,vUnits,vMD,vED)
        ...
        end if
        'enter the calculated values
        vMetricValue = convert_type(word(vValues,1,"|"),"N")
        vEnglishValue = convert_type(word(vValues,2,"|"),"N")
        DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER_STD_METRIC = word(vValues,1,"|")
        DataSubmitted.VALUE_ANSWER_STD_ENG = word(vValues,2,"|")

        end if 'vFn longer than 3

        That should give you something to chew on....
        Pat Bremkamp
        MindKicks Consulting

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