Alan. I have been using listbox for output since V12 or 13-whenever they brought in Field based listboxes.
Acrually since V13 you can stop the left (or whatever you want) box scrolling off. I allow users to define the ‘locked’ columns. and the addition of column totals in V13 was also a big winner for LB based forms. I have one output form-which covers my whole database and it has two listbox areas for display on it-only one shown at any one time. The array based is used for some tables where there is a recursive relationship in the table to I needed a hierarchical kind of view. This form which has a significicant number of features-such as user defined views(admin can set up the fields displayed),inclusion of formula based columns in the fields based listbox and automated personal settings remembering column widths and sort orders and includes dynamically built contextual menus-with user added menu items for reports and some functions, and some interesting enhancements such as filters(a kind of search that remembers the unfiltered selection) split views(for showing statistics) user lists(allowing users to have remembered searches or selections of records) easy table to table navigation(finding related records), contextual tabs of related tables etc etc. Getting to that level of sophistication was indeed some serious work-especially on a large system where replacing over 100 menu bars with a dynamically build system was a marathon in itself. I also created another simpler form which is used as an export wizard which is always array based and I was surprised as in the past(Pre-v12) when i tried array based this could be rather painful with large tables(1million+) but now with even a large selections you can create a fast loading form. Its fairly easy(I say as i have done it and any pain is now a distant memory) to dynamically clear and assign a group of arrays to a listbox area, i would expect the challenges would be about understanding how the user might expect information to relate to other tables especially if you kind of ‘fooling’ them into feeling this external data is part of the database(for example you might have an external view of UPS deliveries and a user might expect to be able to navigate from the ‘order number’ on the deliver to the order which is in the database). I would certainly recommend using Table based for the internal forms and only switching to array based only for the external data. The display of data in field based is easier to deal with. Hope this helps Nigel Greenlee > On 30 Aug 2016, at 21:48, Alan Tilson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > Is there anything new to add to this discussion? > > I'm looking for a way to display records from an external database synced > with records stored in 4D. > > Most of the time there is a matching 4D table but there could also be times > where all the data is coming from an external source, so I suppose I am > talking about array based listboxes. > > As Walt said to start this thread, I'd rather not reinvent the wheel! > > And right now we are using v13.6 but are planning on moving to v15 before > too long, so I'd love to find something that could work in both places. > > Thanks, > Alan > > On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 9:56 AM, Ortwin Zillgen <[email protected]> wrote: > >>> Walt, we looked at replacing output forms with list boxes - until we >>> realised that they had the same problem that output forms have - you >>> cannot stop the left column (say, the ID field) from scrolling off >>> screen when the list is wider than the window and you scroll right. >>> >>> At least, that's the way it was in early v11. >>> If later v11 or v12 has *finally* added a "freeze column" ability, I >>> would be very pleased to hear it. >>> I know AreaList does that. >> >> planned for V13 >> >> splitting in V2004, sort of >> <http://dddd.mettre.de/lbSplit.shtml> >> and footers, too >> <http://dddd.mettre.de/lb_fusszeile_en.shtml> >> >> >> Regards >> Ortwin Zillgen >> ___________________________________________________ >> Stadt Land Fluß * Geographic Informationsystems >> <mailto:[email protected]> <http://dddd.mettre.de?4713> >> RSS <feed://dddd.mettre.de/dddd.xml> >> RSS <feed://dddd.mettre.de/f/DDDD_Links.xml> >> member of developer-network <http://www.die4dwerkstatt.de> >> >> ********************************************************************** >> 4D v12.1 is Available - Now Powered with 64-bit server >> http://www.4d.com/products/new.html >> >> 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) >> FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html >> Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html >> Options: https://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech >> Unsub: mailto:[email protected] >> ********************************************************************** >> > ********************************************************************** > 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) > FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html > Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html > Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech > Unsub: mailto:[email protected] > ********************************************************************** ********************************************************************** 4D Internet Users Group (4D iNUG) FAQ: http://lists.4d.com/faqnug.html Archive: http://lists.4d.com/archives.html Options: http://lists.4d.com/mailman/options/4d_tech Unsub: mailto:[email protected] **********************************************************************
