Re: Strategy for navigation & validation

[Bob Ebert]

At 7:34 PM -0800 3/31/99, Hal DeVore wrote:
>Allow exactly ONE record to be incomplete.  Don't allow a new
>record to be started (or the current record to be marked "done")
>until all fields are filled in.  You could hold this one record
>in a "known" place in the database (index number 1 or something).

That would be a big improvement over the don't-quit-till-it's-filled-in
approach.

Multiple 'incomplete' records could be allowed to, for an even better user
experience.  (The get-the-zip-later user.)

The downside is you've got to write a bunch of code that checks for, warns
on, filters out, and displays incomplete records.  It's probably not too
hard, but it's an additional 'attribute' of data that a user has to learn
about and keep track of.

And you still have to handle the case where incomplete records are present
when you're uploading data to the government datbase, preferably without
crashing said database or invisibly ignoring the partial records.

                                --Bob