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

[Craig McPherson]

that doesn't seem like it would work; correcting 'ont' to 'not' would  
not change the character count...
Craig McPherson
On Mar 5, 2008, at 2:14 PM, Ken Doucet wrote:

> 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
> _______________________________________________
> Qna mailing list
> Qna at provue.com
> http://provue.com/mailman/listinfo/qna