Ampersand and Unique

[JET]

I'm trying to build a db system for signing up participants and scoring in an Observed Trials club (an obstacle-oriented form of off road motorcycle competition).

The present problem (I'll have others) is in preventing a rider from accidently being entered twice during the rather hectic sign-up process.

I want to have an AutoEntry field which automatically concatenates the Event ID with the Rider ID, and for which validation is Unique. Then, if the user accidently tries to sign up a rider twice (in two classes, for example), a message will alert him that that rider is already entered. However, I can't make this work.

To try to figure out why, I tried a simple test:

New file.

Text Field: Event

Text Field: Name

Auto-entry Text Field: EventName

I make the Auto entry to be by Calculaton with:

Event & Name

The two problems are:

1) The Auto-Entry field refuses to concatenate the two values. Only the value from one field shows up. So I tried defining EventName as a Calculation field, using the same calculation. It works as expected, but I don't see any way to set the Unique validation requirement for a calc field.

2) The Auto-Entry field seems to ignore the Unique requirement. Even if I set the calculation to only: Name, I can still create new records, key in the same name, and end up with identical records.

Surely I'm misunderstanding something basic. Can someone please explain what I am failing to understand about auto-entry fields and validation?

James

[danjacoby]

Instead of making the validation field an auto-entry, set it up so that it can't be empty and must be unique, and have a button next to it. The button activates a script that checks to make sure the other fields aren't empty, then sets the field to equal the concatenation.

I would also go into the layout mode and disallow manual entry into this field.

That should do it.

HTH,

Dan

[Ocean West]

A Plug-in will work as well..

oAzium Date & Time 3.01

You could set up something that will prevent you from double booking an participant.