Very Computer

Good morning,

I'm in the throes of writing sofware for my dissertation study. The gist is
that i'm altering the design process to permit a different approach to UI.
(The result is called a PLSS (Passive-Learning-Support-System) in case
you've seen my publications).

Anyhow, the participant's in my study will be using a database constructed in
Foxpro (Win). Each of them is a professional information "user" but not
computer user. Thus my task is to implement this PLSS for ad-hoc data querys
& reports. Though my VB experiences are fair (about 1 year), they are only
with the DOS based version. Thus, i'm not very anxious to write my own ad-hoc
tools.

The questions are :

1. Are there existing tools for the creation of such ad-hoc's? The Crystal
reports shipping with VB3 is still a bit inflexible for my needs. Such tools
would still need to permit my mucking with the UI fairly extensively. (I have
not seen Foxpro's tools.)

2. Barring that, would an ad-hoc utility be doable in VB/Win?

All but flames are welcome!

_don winiecki

Quote:

> Anyhow, the participant's in my study will be using a database constructed in
> Foxpro (Win). Each of them is a professional information "user" but not
> computer user. Thus my task is to implement this PLSS for ad-hoc data querys
> & reports. Though my VB experiences are fair (about 1 year), they are only
> with the DOS based version. Thus, i'm not very anxious to write my own ad-hoc
> tools.

hmm, hope this helps:
What I do, is on my form when the user is enterring data into a field,
the user can simply press "CTRL-S" for search, or whatever, this changes
their current entry field into a search field.  From there, I let them type
in their criteria as follows:
"kaczor .and. jason .not. ralph"
I then take that string, and turn it into a real SQL string through code.
Such as:
"SELECT Customers.* FROM Customers WHERE (Customers.Name LIKE '*kaczor*' AND
'*jason*') AND NOT Customers.Name LIKE '*ralph*'"

However, for searching on more than one field, I use a seperate area.

(In our databases we can have customers with the same name, so we might
as well return a recordset, instead of a record, besides I want what is
returned to be updateable.).

Quote:> All but flames are welcome!

I don't think it's exactly how you want to do it, but it's how I do things.
(They sometimes seem to work...(g)...)

ttyl
Jason

        [ ... original message deleted ... ]

Quote:> hmm, hope this helps:
> What I do, is on my form when the user is enterring data into a field,
> the user can simply press "CTRL-S" for search, or whatever, this changes
> their current entry field into a search field.  From there, I let them type
> in their criteria as follows:
> "kaczor .and. jason .not. ralph"

        [ ... other stuff deleted ... ]

Jason,

What you describe *is* similar to what I want to do. I have a followup question
though. Do you feed your SQL query straight to the underlying database (as I
mentioned in original post, we will use Foxpro (pro)), or are you shelling it
somehow? I must plead ignorance on SQL.

_don