Running Total

[spb]

I am working on a purchase order database. It's pretty far along and I've just added one feature about which I'm confused. The buyer scrolls through a lengthy list of a vendor's products, entering her order quantity in a field on each line. What she'd really like to see is a running total that updates with every quantity she enters.

I've made such a field and placed it in the header of the list layout she's working in. My problem is, it looks like there are two different ways of making this field, and I don't know which is best, or if I am setting myself up for something by using the wrong one. Both seem to work equally on initial testing.

1. Making a Summary field (with "running total" checked) that sums the order quantity field (this field is always empty across all records unless an actual order is in progress). I set this up with a self-join, VendorNbr::VendorNbr to confine summation to just the vendor being worked with's products, but I'm not sure if this makes a difference, as she is working with a vendor's found set of products at the time, and all omitted records will have a quantity of zero.

2. Making a calculation field where the calculation is Sum(OrderQuantity), no self-join involved--it seems to work on the found set only.

Is there a preferred version to use for this job? Does one of these have some aspect that will mess me up in some circumstances?

Steve Brown

[jeffer]

There are twoo solutions depending on what kind of article input you have!

1)A summary field must be placed in a specific part of the layout in the trailing grand summary (between the body and the footer). For the calculation of that summary field you don't need to update your relation when working in a line items purchase solution.

2)When working with repeating fields you do best to use the sum fuction in a calc field.

And please hit me when i'am wrong:)

jeff