Albert, you’re right, it was created way back. However, the data doesn’t exactly repeat but is the same for many items (tracks).
There cannot be duplicated info thanks to the keys. In order to get info related to the item to appear “attached” to that item the track zero construct works. If I had similar info attached to, say, ten tracks, 1 through 10, then I could stop tracks 2 through 10 repeating but it would look like only track 1 had that info and that’s not the same thing. I have a funny feeling, too, that if I stopped duplicates in the reports it stopped them for all items not just the item that had similar data. So I might lose tracks 2 through 10 on the first item and, if the data was the same, track 5 on another which I also don’t want to happen. Maybe that was in the early days of reports being able not to reprint duplicate data and I haven’t tried it again recently. This works and it if ain’t broke... Regards, Alastair. From: Albert Berry Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2014 4:13 PM To: RBASE-L Mailing List Subject: [RBASE-L] - Re: Primary Key Construction: Wisdom Needed When constructing a report, one can tell the system not to repeat data so that it prints only once. Alistair, I suspect that you constructed this system back in the day, when reports did not have that facility. I use it quite often. Albert On 10/16/2014 3:29 AM, Alastair Burr wrote: Bruce, It’s actually two tables – the item one contains common info such as overall time, dates, etc. The tracks one contains title, artist and running time. Other tables contains writers and publishers, musicians and instruments, comments, etc. Any idnumber than ends in “00” refers to the whole item so musicians, for example, that play on all tracks only get listed once rather than for every track. It’s partly a throwback to the days when space was at a premium but mostly because it keeps reports much more concise without repeating the same info for every track. Although tracknumber “00” technically often exists in the reports I replace it with a space. Obviously, it sorts before track number 1 so it follows the item or header data. On forms I use it so I can enter common data. Regards, Alastair.
