A little help about dates...please?

[Ugo DI LUCA]

...and Ray already answered. I should have checked first (while previewing) but this f...g phone call upset me !

OK, I'll forgot about the calculation cascade then...

[BertBoye]

Thank you Ray but now you talk Greek to me i.e "reconciliation of data strings" I have no clue what you are talking about.

I have downloaded your dynamic value list but I think there is a problem with it because I could select the same name twice.

Ugo, Elephants are on hold, looking in to ice bears (beer)now. Honestly speaking, I was trying out your "sliding horizontal portal" and I think something went wrong, I slide my self over Italy, Paris and ended up in ice bear country. I'm now trying to find a way to slide back but I deleted the 'SARS'* script on the way and we are now trying to find out how SARS was build, any idees?

*) �Sliding Across Relation Scripts�

[CobaltSky]

I have downloaded your dynamic value list but I think there is a problem with it because I could select the same name twice.

I have checked the dynamic list demo and it looks ok to me. It is *supposed* to allow you to enter the same name twice, but not for the *same project*. That's the way it's designed.

you talk Greek to me i.e

[BertBoye]

Great Ray now I understand what you tell me.

Can

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi Bertboye, I just doubt it is so simple ! I think you have misunderstood and should look again.

If I'm wrong, I apologize in advance but fetching a value list is quite different from filtering a value list.

You will need to create an index to work with Ray formula. Doing so, refearing to a related value list would not be indexable...

Or I just spent too much energy over this file

Now, for what you asked first, and as you like my useless tips, here's a little "Take me back to Thailand", just for you. Welcome back to Europe !

BackToThailand.fp5.zip

[CobaltSky]

Case(booked=roomid,

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi,

The calc I'm using is :

TEST(MOD(ENT(num/(2^20)), 2),0,2^20) & "

[CobaltSky]

It's a good use of mod, as far as it goes, Ugo, and may be suitable for some applications. But there are a couple of limitations as far as booking system style functionality goes.

1. It is only telling you which values are not selected on the current record, whereas any booking system is going to have to look across all records (or all records for the current date, or current date range etc).

2. The key field numbers quickly get very large, so that with fifty items they will reach FileMaker's limit of precision (15 digits floating point) - which will break any mod schema based on number fields (and would require a compound number generation formula, since numeric calc results are also constrained by the floating point capabilities of FM).

Even if text fields and compound calcs were used to maintain relationship integrity beyond the 50th item, after 67 items, the 20 character indexable word limit will be breached, because Length(2^68) = 21

These would appear to be inherent limitations. If there is a way around them, it is not obvious.

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hello Ray,

I get it. True that this was checking a customer preferencies from his already created profile.

Let see if I got it anyway. Would it be reliable to use Bertboye calc, then place it in a empty layout and script a "copy all record" step in order to paste the record in a field from the Main and use it as a referenced indexed value list ?

[jaydonne]

CobaltSky, I also have downloaded this demo that you have offered to FMAsker, and wanted to say 'thank you'!!!

The set up is awesome. It does things with Filemaker that I didn't know were even possible, and I think I learned more looking at how it is set up than I've picked up in the two years I've been using FM. Go Figure!

With just a few changes it makes a perfect addition to our timetable system for my school, and the office staff are all very impressed. Thankyou from us all!

Jay

[BertBoye]

So after looking in to Ray sample file very close, I did find one fault in it, sorry Ray

[CobaltSky]

Well Bert, it's kind of you to publish your opinion, but I'm afraid I don't agree with either of the points you make.

In the first instance, you've chosen to critique the demo as though it were a solution, whereas it is explicity a sampler, meant to do no more than show a specific technique in response to FMAsker's request. Any implementation of such a technique would clearly take into account a range of factors, including the methodological requirements of the business for which it was to be used.

In fact the several hotel bookings systems that I've chanced to work on explicity booked rooms for nights, not days, so the overlap you envisage as a problem would not have been an impediment for them. I imagine most other hotels are similar - clients rarely check out during the night, and even if they do, the room is unlikely to be re-let on the same night.

Additional filtering may well be desirable in a real-world application of a portal display of available rooms, but would scarcely have been appropriate on a demo - especially not on this thread, where it would have unncecessarily complicated the file, obscured the intent and gone outside of the 'brief'.

As regards your idea for a voluminous reference file to handle additional rooms, I must say that it sounds awkward, and I'd have thought it would be a good deal more tedious to set up and use than any of the several alternative methods of dealing with unlimited rooms that I'd already suggested in an earlier post. I'm puzzled as to why you'd want to do it that way, though of course, I respect your prerogative to set it up however you think best.

[BertBoye]

Ray

I am sorry I did not mean to criticize I am pointing out a thing in your demo that I think is not correct. I do know that hotels are counting nights and they are working with In and Out days. In your demo is a booking in room 1 from 15 to 20th what day is this guest coming to the hotel and what day is they leaving?

IHO, In 15th Out 20th if the booking is from 15th to 20th and he stays for 5 nights or do I miss something here?

[CobaltSky]

...if the booking is from 15th to 20th and he stays for 5 nights or do I miss something here?

If the bookings are for nights and the booking is from 15th to 20th, he stays six nights, viz

1. The night of 15th

2. The night of 16th

3. The night of 17th

4. The night of 18th

5. The night of 19th

6. The night of 20th

As I see it, that is what FMAsker was requesting in the previous posts on this thread. If a different system of booking were required then slight adjustments to the calcs would alter the way bookings are interpreted and displayed.

This is a minor matter of detail in respect of business practices and business data display preferences, but is hardly a 'fault' with the technique of relating date ranges.

[BertBoye]

So Check In 15th check out 21st that is the summary of what you told me, correct. So the booking is from 15th to 21st and not 15th to 20th.

Check in and check out is seeming a standard business practice on all hotels and they all count the nights that the guest staying. Go to online booking center for hotels and add the two dates, you will get 5 nights not 6 not any.

My point in all of this was just to point out that your demo is not using standard business precise for hotel and since many forum users has follow this thred I think it was import to inform.

[CobaltSky]

My point in all of this was just to point out that your demo is not using standard business precise for hotel

The demo does what I understood FMAsker to have requested.

I do not feel that it would have been appropriate to have posted anything else on this thread.

I'm sorry to hear that you feel otherwise.

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi ho Ray and Bert, it was a bad day!!

Sure the sample technique is awesome,

Sure any sample should be taken as a sampler...

Sure that when a thread evolves as it did, there is a moment when anybody should start working on the technique rather that on the file itself.

I was expecting such a dilemna from the beginning here. Remember the thread title. A little help about dates.

I'm quite sure we've gone far further than the "little" expected by FMAsker. :smirk:

[LaRetta]

Hi Everyone!

I would have been surprised if Ray would have presented a demo in any other fashion. That is his style after all - as it should be. The purpose of a demo is to meet a User/Developer/Business need by solving a specific problem and not necessarily what you *think* they want. If a solution needs to be adjusted, it's up to the user to adjust or clarify. FMAsker received exactly what was requested in a brilliant fashion and Ray, as always, certainly delivers the best.

A demo should also only contain fields, calcs and scripts which specifically address the particular functionality of a request (or are required for navigation, etc). To give them anything other than requested, may confuse the receiver of the demo, who then must figure out how it all fits together and which parts of the code are applicable to their needs.

As someone very wise once told me, a demo file should contain "minimal props to 'frame' the exercise."

Cheers!

LaRetta

[TSilvan]

Well, in the hotel where I have been working, we talk to guests about check out date, but we book nights in the bookings system, just like in example provided by cobaltsky. I was very pleased to find this thread, and we may use the method.

It is sad to see such generous help being criticised. That way, soon there may be no more help.

[jaydonne]

I don't know about hotels, but the file CobaltSky posted sure has helped out a treat with what we are doing with a school timetable system. In fact it has been awesome, and has replaced a lot of mess with something so clean.

FMAsker may have said it was 'little', but it was a big question that was asked.

Thanks again to CobaltSky for this. I think its great that there is a forum like this where people are prepared to share such ideas!!

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Hi LaRetta, Hi all,

Now that we've had "Women common good sense", let's have some kind of French Diplomacy as I understand the concerns of everyone after these passionate exchanges.

I'm quite sure there was no real critic to the sample from Bert, but more like a feeling that some here on the Forum could pick-up and use this solution, while there was, in his case, and still in his feeling, some "business related" concerns.

I'd have personnally started by sending a PM to Ray for him to adjust it, if really there was an error (fault isn't a big word BTW ?) but as I said, I was expecting some confusion after such a sampler had been delivered.

As Ray did noticed in a humorous manner (Keep this up and I'll have to start charging you a fee!! ), FMAsker did receive a splendid "workable solution" instead of what we generally call a sampler, a test file or a demo...and I can see from some other posts here that not only FMAsker, Bert and I, took profit of Ray's generous offer.

TVSilvan said :

"That way, soon there may be no more help. "

This will follow up as long as anybody here is keeping in mind the essence of the Forum : Members helping members. It's just a matter of defining what this Help may be.

I'm not sure though that we should issue demos that "only contain fields, calcs and scripts which specifically address the particular functionality of a request (or are required for navigation, etc). ".

This way, we all will be turning out to FMFiles or other Developpers Referenced sites....and we'll loose a bit of FMForums efficiency.

Let say that everybody may help with an attachment, and that some demos are better than others

[Spiderman]

I love this a movie! maybe is to late however... excellents suggestiens from all the develops that joined this discussive...Here's mine: provident some of your database structural, related fields, relationships, etc...as well as scripts or commands used, next describing your problem...Finding recordings that wrangle between two dupes does not revolve complex scriptures in most cases...I am surely that the original problematic occurred because you using text fields instead of the date fields in yours dissolution.

[FMAsker]

Hello again, I have too long to login because I have organized the hotel for costumer