Thinking through a project design....

  • Thread starter Thread starter scorpion53061
  • Start date Start date
S

scorpion53061

vb.net windows app to be used on college campuses.

I need to somehow think this through and come up with some ideas . You guys
have been good to me as far as helping me think things through so I felt
pretty confident coming here.

I have a situation where I need to account for 28 different types of data
entering situations each having about 35 textboxes and corresponding labels
and each textbox has a variable. If the textbox is empty when they click
submit the variable is left blank which is important for how I format the
data. When clicking submit these variables would be recorded to a access
database.

If you were me, how would you approach this situation? Would you use a tab
control? Do you think it would be poor practice to have 2 tabs where the
user had to click a second tab(planning for a min 800x600 screen and not all
textboxes would fit on one tab).

Your thoughts please and they are much appreciated.
 
yust some thoughts

1) a tabcontrol w 28 pages w a datagrid (in the datagrid you would have 2
cols 1 for the question 2nd for the answer)

2) a treeview 28 main nodes
option a) clicking under the main node you split thing up a bit in
subnodes
clicking a subnode would show a panel w your
textboxes (you could fill this dinamically for the selected node)
b) have a subnode for each detail (you can jump to the next
detail automatically when the user made a valid input)
3) a listbox, or combo w your 28 main items calling a panel again (w the
textboxes) keep in mind panels give scrollbars so the limited resolution
dousnt have to be a problem

hope it helped

eric
 
Hi eric

Thank you for your advice.

I need to somehow on the datagrid control allow this to be a control a user
can enter data and then I can assign its contents to variables (first column
e.g. say "Author" then the next column the user would enter a value which
when they clicked submit I would read and assign to variable.

Do you know of a link that would help with this?
 
not really but i think i can set you on the right path adjust this to your
needs
if you create 2 tables in your db
1 will hold an id, a propertytype and a property name (property type would
be 1 of your 28)
2 wil hold an id, a property id, a value and a user (the property's will
belong to someone)

now you can create sets of properties in your db

in the datagrid make a selection of all rows in the 1table connected to the
2nd table (for a prop type)
this gives you a 2 col datagrid
(drgmain is the datagrid)
create a tablestyle and set the first col to readonly (you don't want the
user to edit your property names)
\\
dsForm = New DataSet("data")
dsForm = SqlHelper.ExecuteDataset(gstrCnn, CommandType.Text, strSql)
Dim ts As New DataGridTableStyle
ts.MappingName = "Table"
dgrMain.TableStyles.Clear()
dgrMain.SetDataBinding(dsForm, "Table")
dgrMain.TableStyles.Add(ts)
ts.GridColumnStyles(0).Width = 0
ts.GridColumnStyles(0).ReadOnly = True
ts.GridColumnStyles(1).Width = 100
//

then all you have left is to save the data in the database
i think this could be something that would work wel in a bound structure

anyway i hope it helps

eric
 
Hi Eric,

Thank you for your help.

I did what you said, created another table in the database which will hold
the fields for this grid.

Do you think I am going to have to using this method create a new datagrid
for each tab control form?
 
if you make a good structure for your property data (w i gave you w the 2
tables was out the top of my head youll have to think about it a bit more)
you should be able to do it w 1 datagrid (you would be feeding the datagrid
new sql querries) to select w querry you have to show you could use a
listbox next to the datagrid (this way you wont need a tabcontrol w 28
datagrids, and i think it wil look better, certainly if you adjust the
datagrid and col properties a bit)

eric
 
Back
Top