Hello:

I really haven't anything important to contribute rather than I want to ask about developing exactly that type of apps, with strong interactions between data, something as the entity-relation model, where each entity (table) has data from another entity (table).

In the relational model a very good product to develop easily that type of apps with very related data from several tables is MS-Access, making easy to develop data entry forms with data of another tables (showing in combos by example). Also a powerful report generator make easy to obtain the info stored in the db, sumarizing, averaging, etc.

I'm very interested in develop that type of app in Seaside and truly objects (NOT using relational databases) but not sure about the best way to be productive and get all the results that I can obtain with Access. Will be very useful for me any advice (or best) some examples of that type of apps developed in Seaside.

Also an opinion if that type of app are indicated to solve in Squeak or Seaside or could be better to solve in the traditional approach (bd + access or another RAD tools).

Thanks In Advance by the help.

--- Germán S. Arduino http://www.dimensionO.com

----- Original Message ----- From: "Avi Bryant" avi@beta4.com To: "The Squeak Enterprise Aubergines Server - general discussion." seaside@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 4:29 PM Subject: Re: [Seaside] Suggestions for related complex data?

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003, Markus Fritsche wrote:

...

I'm writing to ask for Ideas how to set related complex data? Say, I have a record "article", and want to set the relation to a distributor, how do I do it best? Known possibilities:

1. a selection list (selectFromList:selected:callback:label) with a button for adding new distributors from the article form.
2. a link to my distributor-listing application, causing a "select" button on the right side to appear.

I tend to prefer (2). As you say, the user is already familiar with that application, and can probably navigate quickly in it to the item they want, whereas beyond 10 items or so, select boxes are very cumbersome.

However, is there any reason you can't have both? Rather than a select box + an "add" button, why not have a select box + button that takes them to the full distributor app if they want? That way if they can quickly pick the one they want from the list, great, otherwise they get the full generality (and can presumably add new ones from the distributor app as well).

...

Are there other possibilities (javascript, popups)?

In terms of maintaining context and not interrupting the "flow", it seems like it's sometimes nice for such things to come up in smaller, separate windows (I don't always like this approach, but it can work well in some cases). I wonder if I could play some javascript and frame games that would allow something like:

distributor := self call: (WAExternalWindow on: (DistributorApp new))

This would pop the DistributorApp up in a new browser window (presumably w/o menu bar or buttons), that would close, and update the main window, whenever the DistributorApp sent #answer: (ie, whenever you chose a distributor).

Thoughts?

Avi