T/ble/form setup

[sam]

I'm after some advice on how I should set this up...For the dbase I'm doing I
have two contracts, 'Contract A' and 'Contract B'. Each have stock items and
a price list. I have a combo box with the data source being the items and
prices from 'Contract A' as this is the primary contract and therefore those
prices should be used if the items exist in that list. When an item does not
exist under that contract I need the data source to be from 'Contract B'
which contains not only all the items from 'Contract A' but all items
presently available.
Hope that makes sense so far, one combo, 2 price lists, contract A is the
first choice, if not in the list then use contract B.

What I'm trying to decide is the best way to trigger a change in the data
source for the combo from 'contract A' to 'contract b' if the item is not in
the initial list i.e. Contract A. I was thinking of triggering it from a 'not
in list' function but there is a possibility the item won't be in either
list. Could also have them manually trigger it but was trying to avoid that
also.... any thoughts? Maybe there is a totally another way that would be
better?

 

[Fred]

Sam,

I noticed that nobody answered. Sometimes getting the important facts into
and described in a posting is tougher than solving the problem. Your
post had not enough on what you have (data and table structure) and what you
want to do, and too much on the (possibly wrong) way you are thinking of
doing whatever it is.

Combo boxes us generally for poplulating fields, yet you do not describe any
such desired action. It sounds like the goal is to look up a price, going
first to "Contract A" if it exists. You didn't say what attribute(s) you
are searching by, and "the search" is at the heart of what you are asking.


Taking a few guesses, here's one thought, if you are just trying to look up
and view a price. One big table with all of those contract items in it.
Have a field which designates which contract it is from. You said that "A"
is a subset of "B". If this is absolutely always true, 100.00% of the time,
then the two choices would be "AandB" and "Bonly" and you would enter the
"AandB" items only once. If not, it would be simplest/best to make your
choices "A" and "B" and just make 2 records for common items. (A data
structure purist would make the choices "Aonly", "AndB" and "Bonly", but that
level of abstraction would probably cause more problems that it is worth)


Then, when you do the search, and get the one or two entries, sort it so
those in contract A are on top. Ditto for a combo box if you define a data
loading /. field population mission.

Hope that helps a little.

 

[Maarkr]

like Fred said, I'm not sure if I'm getting it either, but my thoughts about
an interface include:
use a list box to show the choices, when u select an item in the list box,
it opens the subform details for that choice... then a combo to commit the
selection in the list box???????