Another Save/Revert thread

I wasn't sure where to start this thread. Since I'm working in Adv 8, I figured this is as good a place as any:

My old 6 solutions had a pretty arduous change log scripted into it. Each field on the layout that we wanted to track changes for had a global field masquerading as the data field, and a "save" button would compare the data in the global field to it's "parent" data field. If the data was no the same, it would append the OLD data to a global field (with a 4-ltr field identifier), then write the contents of a global field into a related field in a changelog database. This way, rollbacks could be scripted pretty easily for the system administrator (me). After the old data was safely stored away, the data fields would be overwritten with the data in the child global fields. It wasn't pretty, but it worked.

I was looking forward, during my upgrades, to crafting a more elegant solution using the Save/Revert changes script steps in 7, but so far, all I've seen is how to write down what the fields were changed TO, which doesn't really help much for rollback purposes (particularly with legacy data). I've created a layout that does not save changes automatically, and scripted a "save" button with the idea of writing the contents of the fields to a global field before committing the records, but it writes the new contents, not the pre-commit contents. Same thing with creating a calculated field to store a shadow of the record's original data that can then be compared to a global field before committing. The calculated field updates (no matter what I do in the settings) as soon as the field is updated, not when the record is committed.

I tried to see if I could find any functions to pull "pre-commit" data from a field, but nothing leaps out at me as delivering what I'd like.

Any thoughts?

Edited October 7, 200520 yr by Guest