One approach might be to use a hierarchal menu -- first level
is first letter of the company, second level is all of the
companies whose names begin with that letter.
Or, set a search to pull up the list of companies which contain
a certain phrase.
-Tilghman
--
"There cannot be a crisis today. My schedule is already full."
--Henry Kissinger
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Chalkley [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, January 26, 2001 10:17
>
> I apologize for the OT question, but I've asked this on
> several other forums and gotten no constructive replies. If
> someone wants to refer me to a better place to ask this, I'd
> be grateful.
>
> I've got a complicated question, which probably has a simple
> answer, so I'll try to avoid wasting everyone's time as best
> as I can.
> I've read tons of stuff about relational database design -
> normalization, integrity, etc., but none of it is really
> relevant to my question.
>
> My question is this: When you're designing the user interface
> for a browser-based data entry system, what's the best way to
> accomodate linked records? There's loads of info out there on
> querying and reports, but everyone seems to ignore the fact
> that the data has to get into the database somehow, and often
> it's via online entry.
>
> For example: You have a table of Service Calls and a table of
> Companies. Each Service Call can be linked to one or two
> companies (trust me, there's a reason). You're using an
> Auto-Incremented Integer, call it 'comp_id', for a Primary
> Key for Companies. Now, when someone goes to enter a Service
> Call online, how do they establish the relationship to the
> correct Company or Companies? If you have two attributes in
> Service Calls, say 'comp1' and 'comp2', surely you don't
> expect the person entering the data to just happen to know
> the correct value of 'comp_id'? But you can't pop up a list
> of 1,000 'comp_id' and 'comp_name' combinations, either. What
> am I missing? (I have the feeling I'm going to feel stupid
> when I get the answer, so let's go ahead and get it over with...)
>
> Sorry for the long-winded question, and thanks in advance for
> any suggestions.
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