Hey all, Need some advice here. I have an app that functions somewhat like an old library card catalog index. It allows users to input market studies with an abstract, as well as the location of the material. The customer (our marketing dept.) wants a reference number to be generated in the format of "Continent/CompanySite/SequenceNumber" so that when records are listed, the users can easily scan the reference numbers and see where the item is located (for example, a reference number of "NA/ABH/21" would indicate that the document is located in Auburn Hills (North America). The 21 is simply the next sequence number from the Oracle DB. Okay, great. Now, when a user inputs a study they have to indicate the continent and the site. No problem. I use Nate's TwoSelectsRelated to populate the site list based on the continent selected. Buuuuuuut...if a site isn't listed in the picklist, we need to allow the user to add a new site. Okay, no problem. Buuuuuuut...here's the problem--our company has acronyms for each site, all over the world. So Auburn Hills might be ABH, Windsor might be WDR, etc. Because the reference numbers need to include the acronyms, those obviously need to be stored in the database. But, if we allow users to add their own locations, we run into the problem of users either A) using the wrong location acronym, or B) typing duplicate site names into the db. It would be nice if there was one central place where I could find all of the correct acronyms, but unfortunately, they aren't always standard. I thought of using just a numbering schema, but this does not prevent one person from adding location "Auburn Hills" and another from adding "Aubern Hils". I'm a little stuck. Can anyone bring their winch and tow me out? Thanks! Terri ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists

