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

[Ken Doucet]

Message: 2
Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2008 10:33:47 -0600
From: David Thompson <dthmpsn1 at uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: Tracking changes made to an address block of info in a
	database
To: "Panorama Questions & Answers \(Discussion\)" <qna at provue.com>
Message-ID: <p06240801c3f471824a12@[130.126.129.161]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed"

>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

*********************************


Dave, how about a character count approach where I add up the number of
characters of the block in question and assign it to another field and that
way a tab through the block wouldn't change count and not trigger a change
in timestamp. Possibly doing something like if char count of block not =
original value in tracking field then set current date/time/user in the
tracking field?
I am just searching documentation to see if I can find something to start
from .

Ken