RE: Strategy for navigation & validation

[Bob Ebert]

At 12:42 PM -0800 3/31/99, Mike Pellegrino wrote:
>You could read the record on the conduit side, check the flag in the
>record, and decide not to act on it.  You still wind up pulling it over
>the serial line, but the hit for a small number of records is
>negligible.

One problem with this approach is that you're left with some number of
partial records that end up being ignored.  Not good for the census!

To get around this means you've got to add more UI to help the user go back
and find records that were not completely filled in.  If it's much later,
they may have left the area in which case finding the zip code could be a
pain.

Essentially, you've got a problem that you really want the user to be
immediately aware of -- which means that hiding the issue in the name of
elegant UI is exactly the wrong approach.  :)

                                --Bob