Tracking changes made to an address block of info in a database

[David Thompson]

>I have a need to track changes made to the address part of the database so
>that anyone looking at the record can know when the latest changes were made
>to an individual's address. In the original DOS database I had added a
>change date field and the  block of data in question had a border around it
>with a chgedate field embedded in the frame and relied on user to remember
>to update that field. This was less than ideal as we could never know how
>diligently end users would be in maintaining the field.
>
>I have searched on time stamp and info("fieldname") and modifyrecord - there
>is no shortage of material but am I looking in the right area?
>
>Question 1 - is treating a block of data this way viable in
>Panorama -perhaps time stamp coupled with .modifyrecord /info(fieldnname)

I think it's viable, but it's a little tricky. If you setup a time 
stamp field, it will be updated whenever anything in that record is 
updated, not just the address. .ModifyRecord can be triggered just by 
tabbing through a cell, without making any change at all. You will 
need to provide a way to remember what the address was before it was 
changed, so that you can compare them to see whether a change 
actually took place. You could do that by providing an extra field 
for the complete address. Whenever an apparent entry into an address 
field triggers the procedure, it would assemble a complete address 
from the city province etc. fields, and compare them to the value in 
the complete address field. If they are different, then the complete 
address field and the change date field would both be updated.

You can also setup automatic procedures that are triggered by data 
entry into certain specific fields, (page 316 of the handbook) but 
these can also be triggered just by tabbing through the field, so you 
would still need to have some means of comparing the current value to 
the old value to see if a change has actually occurred.

Dave