Trevor, Thanks for your well thought through response. Sorry I wasn't clear in my request. > One thing that's certain, almost EVERYTHING is possible, it just depends > on how much time and effort you're willing to put into it :) That's what I thought. > 1. You load in a recordset with roughly 50 items per record that are > displayed in an HTML form Yes > 2. You want to simulate the functionality you had with Filemaker, but it > only needs to work for about 5-6 users so doesn't necessarily have to be > as robust as Filemaker Not quite the remote angle as having to deal with loads of 'dumb' users. I can train the ones I have. > 3. Here's where I get hazy.. Do you want to: > A. Type in some value and have the data be filtered by that > value (ie. "Show all records with January, 5, 2004 as the created date) No, not that one. > or.. B. You want to enter a value into a form and have that > value be copied to all records (ie. For "expense type" where it says > "Auto" change it to "Automobile" and have all records reflect this > change)??? Yes that's the one. but just the recordset, not ALL records. > 4. Dynamic fields that hold the values of calculations.. Not sure if > this is part of your requirements or if it was just a little side note. > Nothing needed here. > > Here are some thoughts: > > 3a. Typing a value into a field and clicking "submit" or using a > Javascript "On Change" type event could result in your form submitting a > new SQL query with a WHERE clause that filters the data Simple submit wouldn't work as the form may also submit updates for that record alone. I have been thinking that it needed to have a js wrapper to handle the 'focus'. > 3b. Entering a new and using the "submit" or "On Change" mentioned > above, you could just do a SQL "update" on a range of records. If you > want to do both filtering AND doing a global change on the filtered > data, just combine the two WHERE criteria. Because I am using a temporary table and some tie between the temp table and the original tables, the scope is easily managed. > > > If, however, you want to load a bunch of data and manipulate it > client-side without hitting the DB every time, you could conceivably do > that in Javascript but it'd be a bear to build. But not impossible I > think. No, definitely server-side. > I think I'm missing your intended use though. Can you be more > descriptive in what you'd like to do? Walk us through it. I'll begin by describing what we do, then describe the process. My group, part of a larger company, specialise in clearing copyright for book chapters and journal articles on behalf of educational establishments (mainly UK). We then supply, where requested, a text-pdf of the material, to the customer who mounts it for student use. The database is used by our customers via a web interface to make and manage their requests. Currently set up in FileMaker (I've a Mac background) I'm moving it to MySQL for a couple of years to allow us to scale up significantly. After that I will be merging my system into the company Oracle/MySQL/JSP system (currently being overhauled). The staff currently work on Filemaker clients so the GUI is easy-peasy and we've been spoilt as its so flexible and easy to develop and change. So I have to build a manageable client for my team. I started on Java Swing but developing and learning was a real headache, so I've moved to an interim web interface. The Filemaker function I'm attempting to replicate is called 'Replace' and it basically takes the data from the field that the user has 'in focus' and sets each recordset.record's equivalent field to that value, regardless of data type, so it works on strings, numbers and dates. A typical use would be where we have searched for everything that is ready to deliver to the customer and enter a delivery date into each record. They aren't usually that simple, else I would script it differently (as I will for the actual delivery date), but I'm sure you've got my drift by now. Cheers George -- PHP Windows Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
