Before I start - can this be done? (easily)

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jonathan Smith
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J

Jonathan Smith

I am thinking about attempting a program to help my colleagues at
school to write their pupil reports. Each report has two sections: a
list of skills with a seies of tick boxes to show the level reached,
and an area to write a comment underneath. Each subject is slightly
different in the number of skills and their description and therefore
the position of the eomment is slightly different. I realise that I
can create different forms to resemble the layout of the different
reports and I can link these to a database to save the data. However
entering the information is not the problem.

What I want to be able to do review the reports for an individual
pupil so that as I move through their records the appropriate form is
used to display each subject. Is is possible to have a field in the
database that stores the subject name and therefore makes it possible
to view the record with the form that has been used to create it. In
other words, with a particular pupil selected it will use the History
form to show the history report and the maths form to display the
maths report and it seemlessly goes from one to the other as you cycle
through them. Obviously I will also need to print out the records for
each subject using the appropriate style of report.

Is this possible?

Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance - it will help an overworked teacher.

Jonathan Smith
 
I would use a tab control instead of popping up different forms for each
subject. That way you can just clicked back and forth
between subjects. Just a thought.
 
Well, first of all the form you use to view the records will be bound to the
data, therfore if you were scrolling through the records using a curson down
key for example on a datagrid, you could not expect the current form to be
changed as you would loose the bindings etc.

However, One way ( and Im sure there are others ), is to load hidden forms
for the different reports and for each record selected, fill the hidden
form;s fields with the record data. If you wanted to change the data then
you would need to update the datagrid control bound to the dataset.

So in essence, the answer is yes, even if a little messy.

Interestingly enough, the first thing which came to mind when I read your
post was Lotus Domino. records ( notes ), This could have really easilly
done what you wanted. But hey, were not here to discusss notes.

Regards - OHM#



Jonathan said:
I am thinking about attempting a program to help my colleagues at
school to write their pupil reports. Each report has two sections: a
list of skills with a seies of tick boxes to show the level reached,
and an area to write a comment underneath. Each subject is slightly
different in the number of skills and their description and therefore
the position of the eomment is slightly different. I realise that I
can create different forms to resemble the layout of the different
reports and I can link these to a database to save the data. However
entering the information is not the problem.

What I want to be able to do review the reports for an individual
pupil so that as I move through their records the appropriate form is
used to display each subject. Is is possible to have a field in the
database that stores the subject name and therefore makes it possible
to view the record with the form that has been used to create it. In
other words, with a particular pupil selected it will use the History
form to show the history report and the maths form to display the
maths report and it seemlessly goes from one to the other as you cycle
through them. Obviously I will also need to print out the records for
each subject using the appropriate style of report.

Is this possible?

Is there a better way?

Thanks in advance - it will help an overworked teacher.

Jonathan Smith
Click to expand...

Regards - OHM# (e-mail address removed)
 
Jonathan Smith said:
What I want to be able to do review the reports for an individual
pupil so that as I move through their records the appropriate form is
used to display each subject. Is is possible to have a field in the
database that stores the subject name and therefore makes it possible
to view the record with the form that has been used to create it.
Click to expand...

Jonathan... I don't know why everybody has gone off deep end on this one.
The answer seems to be "yes." You would check the field (that indicates
which form to use) and display the appropriate form with that data.

I'm not going to suggest a UI but a tab control (as suggested) seems
entirely wrong. You can "morph" the display form as the record pointer is
moved into the correct one for viewing each report. It seems like a fun
project to write.

Tom
 
Tom Leylan said:
I'm not going to suggest a UI but a tab control (as suggested) seems
entirely wrong. You can "morph" the display form as the record pointer is
moved into the correct one for viewing each report. It seems like a fun
project to write.
Click to expand...

Oops... I better clarify that.

It's not that you shouldn't use a tab control but rather that you wouldn't
want visible tabs such that the user has to select the proper one. The
"morphing" could be as easy as the proper tab being selected automatically.
You just don't want to actually see the tabs.
 
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