I record the creation account name, creation date, modification account name, and modification date in all my data tables.

 

I've noticed that in one table that has only one record and has all global fields, the modification info never changes. (I have not set up the creation and modification fields as global fields, but all other fields in the table are global, and the table holds only one record.)

 

Any ideas why this would be? It works perfectly in other normal data tables.

 

~Courtney

global fields do not belong to the record, so any changes made to them to not get recorded on the record that you happen to be on.

Aha. Is there any way that I can record who changes global fields and when?

Nope.  Global fields are unique to the session, so two users can modify a global field at exactly the same time, neither changes will be saved to the database when they log off.

Your understanding of how global fields work may be flawed... what is it that you expect users to do with these global fields.

 

To make it abundantly clear: when someone opens a database and changes a global field, that change is not saved.

I have some global fields that are only accessible by administrators, and only changed once a month. When we change them, we take the files offline and make those changes in single-user mode, so that when others log in, those fields are automatically populated with the updated information, and the users can't change them, because they don't have the access privileges to do so.

 

I imagine this could probably be done in a better way though. I'm limping along with a system that was created in FM 4.0, and which I've just updated, patched, and bandaged over the years.

The way to do this is to build a one-record preferences/settings table that has real fields, not globals.  That way any changes can be logged and the files do not have to be taken off-line.

At startup the globals are set with the data from the one-record table.