Radio Buttons and Text Item Input in Forms 6i

[Hassan Ayub]

Hi Folks,

I have designed a simple form in Developer 2000 (6i), which is
basically going to store the responses from a survey consisting of
about 50-60 questions. All the questions have 4-6 options which the
end user has to choose from the designed radio buttons. In some
questions the user also has the option of giving his/her comments
which usually are not longer than 2-3 lines of text. Now my problem is
that 80% of questions require input as the radio buttons selection
which actually stores ‘1a', ‘1b' etc in the varchar2 fields, but in
the rest of the questions which require 2-3 lines of text, how am I
suppose to store these text lines when there is no editor defined or
should I define a text editor for each question in the design phase,
but how will the user invoke the editor, via a button?

TIA


Hassan

[Daniel Morgan]

Hassan Ayub wrote: Hi Folks, I have designed a simple form in Developer 2000 (6i), which is basically going to store the responses from a survey consisting of about 50-60 questions. All the questions have 4-6 options which the end user has to choose from the designed radio buttons. In some questions the user also has the option of giving his/her comments which usually are not longer than 2-3 lines of text. Now my problem is that 80% of questions require input as the radio buttons selection which actually stores ‘1a', ‘1b' etc in the varchar2 fields, but in the rest of the questions which require 2-3 lines of text, how am I suppose to store these text lines when there is no editor defined or should I define a text editor for each question in the design phase, but how will the user invoke the editor, via a button? TIA Hassan

The basic problem, it appears, is that your table(s) are based on the
concept of using a relational database as though it was a flat file. If
your schema was relational you wouldn't have a problem. And the reason I
suspect this is the case is that the questions number, 1, 2, 3 ... and
the response a, b, c ... belong in separate columns. Then you could have
your comments in a separate column, or table related by a FK and there
would be no problem.

Design a proper relational schama and the problem will fix itself.

--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
damorgan@x.washington.edu
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