Help! SprintDB question.

[popabawa]

Hi,

I've just got up & runnning with SprintDB and I'm pretty impressed so far.

Just one thing I have a problem with...

Imaging a table (call it tblPeople);

person_id person_firstname person_surname
1 John Smith
2 Jane Brown

etc...

I'd like to represent these values in a DropDownBox on a form so they are represented in the format;

'Smith, John' or 'Brown, Jane'

i.e. I'd like to combine the two fields.

I'm stumped. This is easy using MS Access and I've tried a number of methods but no luck so far.

If you can offer any help / advice I'd be really, really grateful!

Thanks, Iain

[popabawa]

:evil:

Just though I'd update you on this in case anyone else has this problem...

Had an email from the delevopers and the scenario I've described above is'nt possible, i.e. combining two fields in a drop-down box for easy entry.

I'll explain the situation in a little more detail...

Assume have two tables (e.g);

person_id person_firstname person_surname
1 John Smith
2 Jane Brown

and;

task_id task_name task_assigned_to_id
1 Book venue for conference 1
2 Book venue for training 2

linked via person_id ---> task_assigned_to_id

I want one form in the db to assign a task and assign it using first name & last name.

I can't change the structure of the main db because it's used elsewhere in the business.

Can any of the other Pocket PC db's cope with this (what I would have though to have been) fairly basic functionality.

TIA!

[famousdavis]

I've been stumped on the same issue, too! You're quite right -- in MS Access, a concatenated dropdown is easy to accomplish.

My ugly workaround was to add a third field on my "names" table where I enter the displayed format of the name. So, I have a first_name, last_name, and display_name columns. In the dropdown, I dropdown the display_name.

The obstacle is being unable to concatenate fields, isn't it?

What I have in mind to try to overcome this is writing a macro that can manipulate the first_name and last_name values and automatically create and insert the display_name into the table -- yes, it's redundant data, but it's a necessary evil. The macro would hopefully handle the work of concatenation of values into a distinct, 3rd value. But I've not written a macro for SprintDB yet, and I've other tweaks I'd rather do right now to my database application, so it's a low-priority work effort for me.

At some point, Microsoft will surely improve ADOCE to permit greater flexibility of database functions. We can hope....

[Kati Compton]

If the original table cannot be changed, you can probably create one additional table that has person_id display_name, and you could probably write something to fill in display_name automatically by grabbing the values from that first table...

But I haven't used SprintDB - I'm just referencing from my limited previous databasing experience.

[ppcPianoTuner]

Well, 1.5 years later I have a brand new PPC (Dell X50v) with latest/greatest and this simple query still does not work. Who would have guessed it could be soooo difficult?

I'm new at this pocket stuff, tho' I am halfway decent at MS Access on the desktop.

I was trying to do the name concatenation for a drop down box... I think I'll go see if I can somehow get info from the PPC's address book instead!

Paul (The-Piano-Techy-Guy)