| Thinking outside the box form design assistance [message #501937] |
Fri, 01 April 2011 09:39  |
 |
Vachaun22
Messages: 10
Registered: March 2011
|
Junior Member |
|
|
Hello all,
I'm in a bit of a quandry with an educational project I'm working on.
I have a form that will need to insert records into 2 different tables. It's a trucking company order system, so the 2 tables are an order table with generic order information, and the then a stop table that keeps track of all stops for the order (both pickup and delivery).
Now, in order to keep tracks of multi-stop loads, the orders table keeps the ID of the first pickup and the last delivery in it's record, while the stops all keep the order number in their record along with a stop sequence number.
My problem is because of the way the links are created, and the number of fields used and links to multiple other tables, I can't use a master detail form. I need very granular control on field access during data entry and whatnot that a master-detail doesn't allow.
Without master-detail I have no 'grid' control available to show all the stops associated with the order.
So far I've come up with two very crude solutions. The first solution would populate a combobox control that would have all the stops in it, and when you select a value it will load that stop's details.
The second solution is to use a tree on the left that would show the order, and then a particular stop detail as a child in the order the stop sequence is in. When you select the node, the details will load on the right.
Would anyone happen to have any other suggestions on how this might be designed? At this point I'm stuck as I'm used to windows programming, where I would have many more controls available to me which gives me much more design power and more choices.
Also, my particular textbook does not cover using tree controls, so I was hoping someone might point me to a resource that explains how to use them correctly?
Thanks in advance.
|
|
|
|
| Re: Thinking outside the box form design assistance [message #501946 is a reply to message #501937] |
Fri, 01 April 2011 11:09  |
 |
Littlefoot
Messages: 21818
Registered: June 2005
Location: Croatia, Europe
|
Senior Member
Account Moderator |
|
|
Without actual data model, it is kind of difficult to guess what might be going on.
Saying that master-detail won't work because of "links to other tables" - what does that mean? I *think* that you are talking about referential constraints and are afraid that you can't display all information you need.
If that's so, I'd say that you are wrong. Querying mechanism would require a (relatively) simple POST-QUERY trigger that would fetch data from all those tables, based on foreign keys relations. Inserts work fine too, as long as you know what to store where. It can be done in several ways: directly by putting items into the form (if possible; Forms allow multiple master-detail blocks in the same form). Moreover, it is possible to create a view (based on all those tables), base a form data block on that view, and then use INSTEAD OF trigger to insert data into a view (actually, all underlying tables). Finally, there's always an option to insert values using INSERT statements.
If not, what is it, then?
As of form design: use anything you find appropriate. If you think that tree is what you need, go for it. I don't know whether you realized that Online Forms Help system offers detailed explanation of many Forms features, so - it is a good start to investigate what you're interested in. It also contains many examples.
A question, if I may: if you are an experienced Windows programmer, why don't you do the job using a tool you know? I believe there is a way to fetch/insert data from an Oracle database using ... whatever you use.
|
|
|
|
] 
Blog
Search
Help
Members
Register
Login
Home
