Field Entry tag

[DennyB]

I have a hosted solution containing 500+ unique fields. If a field is modified, I am looking for a way to identify what field has been modified, the user name who modified it, and the "modified on" date. Does anyone have a suggestion on how to attack this or if it is even possible?

[zincb]

This is a very common request, but solutions are somewhat less than trivial, ranging from doubling the number of fields in your solution, to complex scripts.

If you search FMForums for "audit" and "log" and you will find several great solutions.

[Lee Smith]

Hi Denny,

zincb is correct, in fact I just responded to a similar question yesterday . Click Here to read my response and a couple of leads to how this is done.

Lee

[zincb]

I went back to refresh my memory on this, and wound up modifying a Clickware FM3 solution that doesn't require a lot of extra fields, and that is relatively easy to implement. Because you have 500(!) fields, I added a script to write the calculation script you will need for one of the fields -- I don't know if it will break when it has to evaluate 500 conditions, though. IF was used instead of CASE, which has been known to break.

The attached file was updated to reflect the last minute layout name change that made the previous one not work!

modfieldmod.zip

[Oldfogey]

Hey, Zinch, can you elaborate on "..CASE has been known to break."

[-Queue-]

Both Case and If are limited to 168 nested statements.

[zincb]

There are a couple of threads on FMForums where people say as few as 11 case statements caused problems & refused to work. I personally have not experienced this, but with so many FM versions and multiple platforms and operating systems, one can't be sure without actually sitting in the chair of the person asking the question.

From the previous post, it appears the solution I provided will not work for DennyB, who has 500 fields, assuming that the 168 limitation hasn't been lifted since FMP 4.1. DennyB must, therefore, use one of the more cumbersome methods, or find 150 or so fields that are critical to audit and ignore the rest.