Finding Records and Reports

Finding Records and Reports

Finding Records and Reports.

Finding specific records to edit is a fundamental part of editing and JGuiGen helps with this process. Rather than scrolling down the table looking for a certain record you can "FIND" it. Since this is often uese it will be covered here. Note that is you press the Help button you will see a screen similar to this one. The screens you will see describe the Find functions.

When you work with data there are a number of fundamental actions that you carry out. Here is a partial list.

1. CRUD (Create, Review, Update, Delete)
2. Find selected records or a specific record.
3. Generate Reports on records
4. Frequency Count Select Columns (and generate a mean for numberic columns)
5. Backup Records

The FIND button on every JGuiGen application (unless you suppress it when generating the application). helps with items 2 and 3 on this list. Of course the rest of JGuiGen provides number 1.

When you Edit the Column data in the Data Dictionary, one of the checkboxes is "Use in Query?" By default all columns can be used in generating queries.

When you click on the FIND button for any JGuiGen application the following screen comes up:

1. Tabs - Note that there are three tabs at the top of this screen.

We will discuss the NEW tab first since it is the most commonly used.

2 Fields - The names in the FIELD column will vary depending upon the table you are working with.

Type - the TYPE column shows if the data is C>haracter, N>umeric, B>oolean, D>ate, etc.

3. Action - The ACTION column defaults to "Not Used V". The screen shows the drop down combobox that appears if you click on the down arrow. In this case we are selecting "is less than" as an action.

Note that one of the Actions is the SQL "Like". You will need to place a percent sign (%) before your "compare to" entry for all records that have a field that "ends with" the value you enter. You can also place a percent sign after you value for all records that have a column that "starts with" your value. You can place a percent sign before and after your value to find records that contain your value anywhere in the column you are comparing. For example I could choose PROMPT LIKE %NEW% and I would get all records that contained "NEW" anywhere in the PROMPT column. This is very handy for finding individual prompts in the INTERNATIONALIZATION screen.

4. Compare to - You click on the COMPARE TO column and enter a value for the column to be compared to. In the example above we are going to ask for row where the "user_id < 35."

5. And/Or - If you want to string more than one criteria together, click on the AND/OR column and choose AND or OR.

6. Options - This shows most of the drop down list of comparisons that are available. "Is NULL" and "is not Null" are also available.

7. Execute - When you click on the EXECUTE Button, the scrolling list on your screen will be limited to the rows that match the critia you have selected.

8. Select All - this removes the filter and goes back to showing all active rows.

9. Save - this allows you to save a query and use it later without entering the values.

10. HIDDEN CRITERIA - If your tables allows you to mark rows as "removed" JGuiGen will automatically add this criteria to the selection filter. You can override this by clicking ot he "Show_Inactive_Button." This button toggles through three states. You can view active records, all records (including inactive records) or only inactive records.