Dummy Variables in browse screens?

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Fischer" <tim.fischer at trinitytransport.com>
To: "'Fplist (E-mail)'" <filepro-list at seaslug.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2005 2:27 PM
Subject: Dummy Variables in browse screens?


> I'm beating my head against a wall on this one.  Maybe someone can help 
> me?
>
> First off, I'm running FP 5.0.13 on Solaris 9.
>
> I'm trying to organize a lot of data to make things cleaner and faster.
> This is a file of trucking companies throughout the US, Canada and Mexico.
> To take into account situations where 1 company has multiple offices, I've
> created a Terminal File and a Corporate Office file.  All contacts are
> stored in a "contacts" file and all addresses (3 per terminal) are stored 
> in
> an "address" file.  This is to make change easy - if I need to change an
> address that is duplicated in several places, I make one change to the
> address file and it's all done.  The idea is to not duplicate data to keep
> everything clean.
>
> The problem is, if I need to go into the Corporate Office file, sorted by
> "state".  I've figured out how to do that (basically by rclerking into the
> address file and using a lot of dummy variables on screen) but I'm needing
> to put some of the data from the Corporate Office file into the browse
> screen.  Is this possible?  I'd really prefer not to duplicate data, but 
> it
> looks like I'm going to have to...
>
> Tim Fischer

I'm not clear what the actual problem is but I'll make a guess and start to 
talk about that and you say if it's the right track before I get too 
detailed, or maybe the first hints are all you will need anyways.

Is the problem that you want to display info from more than one file in the 
same browse list?

No problem.

You can put dummies in a browse display, and you can even fill those 
variables on the fly, same variable with different data for each record, by 
using browse peocessing.
browse processing runs once for every record collected into the browse.

I think you have the STN book, (I think you have _my_ STN book actually :) 
so that contains as good a description of how to use browse processing as 
any.

It might be more efficient to do two passes through the data, one pass, 
selecting the same records, but not a browse lookup, to populate some 
arrays, then the 2nd pass is the browse that has browse processing that only 
copies array elements to the dummies in the browse display, rather than 
having the lookup to the other file right in the browse processing. That 
should result in fewer lookups being performed and a browse user interface 
that isn't slower than usual.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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