How do I get dynamic Choice field towork?

Thank you for your quick response, Fred. I’m finally beginning to believe that I might actually be able (with considerable help) to operate in Ninox. I entered the code you gave me in the Payments.Category, and a similar code in a newly created Service field (with appropriate M:N table). The cascade feature works in both cases, At the moment, it displays the Choice index value as opposed to the text value - i.e. ‘3’ instead of “Burger’ for Fred’ The Provider field (normal Choice) works just fine.

I decided to change my model because I really want to use list boxes wherever possible. It appears that the only format for doing this in Ninox is to use Choice fields. I can eliminate the requirement for Parent tables by ensuring that I only entering unique options when creating the Choice field. I’m now working with a model that has two M:N tables and the Payments table.

Daily Rant begins.

It also seems that the only way to create the Choice options is to enter them manually. I have about 120 Services, of which about 40 are ‘current’. I can handle entering these. What if I had 1,500 or 15,000.

When I retired from the Army, I took university courses (mostly computer) for a couple of years and then talked my way into a MBA programme. My intentions was to get an extremely well paid position where I didn’t have to do very much I’m still waiting on that, but I did end up teaching Access and Excel in a business computing course at the university for a number of years.

The MBA programme required that I take of couple of marketing courses, and, from what I remember, it makes to sense to tell prospective customers that Ninox will work well for them if they will enter, manually, their 15,000 options in the Choice field, and the manual doesn’t suggest that there’s any other way of doing it. In a similar vein, why is there is no mention of a way of creating a key, or unique, index, in the manual. This was certainly mentioned in most of my texts as being an essential component of relational database design, and as far as I’m aware, it still is an essential element. Also, while in the Army, we’d do a procedure, if that’s the correct term, that we called an Appreciation of the Situation (Brit equivalent of US Army Estimate). One thing we were taught to do was to ask (frequently) ‘So what?’ I find my self asking my self this question frequently when looking at Ninox. ‘I’m putting a Link to field in my table.’ ‘So what’. ‘I’ve created a link between two tables’. ‘So what’. ‘I’m putting an a.Provider = b.Provider in my table’. ‘So what?’. What do these things do fro me, impractical terms?

I really don’t get the Zen approach that Ninox appears to be taking in providing information. I’ll admit to being a database Luddite.

Daily rant ends.

I think that my current model will meet my immediate needs, provided that the list box display problem mentioned in my first paragraph can be corrected. Minor issues can be corrected when ‘Ninox for Dummies’ and ‘Ninox NX Scripting for Dummies’ become available.

In any case, thanks, once again, for your quick and helpful response.

Forgot to mention, my M:N table fields are also Choice fields. No real reason that they couldn't be text, if that makes the dyanamic Choice work better.

Thanks for your response. I didn't know that the source for a dynamic Choice field coud be a table - it certainly isn't mentioned in the manual. I see in the image you posted that you have 'select Fonts' in the dynamic values portion and 'Font' in the Dynamic value name area. Is one of these the source table name?

As I noted in my rant, I'm quite a Luddite when it comes to working with Ninox. Any advice you can offer will be appreciated.

I feel like I’m living in interesting times, in the sense of the Chinese curse. I’m trying to create what I think is a very simple database, which I’ve outlined previously. I’ve now replaced the previous M:N tables ( Choice fields) with tables containing text fields. I entered the I following formula in the dynamic Choice ‘Category’ field in the Payments table, and, wonder of wonders, it worked, displaying those Categories that are related to the Provider selected in the ‘Provider’ field.

So, I entered the following formula in the dynamic Choice ‘Category ’ field.

 
let curRec := this;

select ProvCat where Provider = text(curRec.Provider)

It worked!

I then entered the filling formula in dynamic Choice ‘Service’ field.

let curRec := this;

select CatSvc where Category = text(curRec.Category)

It didn’t work, and I have no idea why. I’m coming to the end of my trial period, and I suspect that I’m going to have to accept the fact that Nino is not a viable option for me.

 Any advice you can offer will be appreciated.

Hi, Fred. I see than I'm now classified as a ninja - dertainlyu not like any ninja I've ever heard of. I think you suggexted the one field, two links to M:N table. I like the structure - haave no idea how to use it.

Anyway, my CatSvc table (JPEG - should show up)

Somethingwrongwith aspect ratio. CatSvc table below.

Hope this works.

THink these are what you're looking for. By the way, there are no constraints in the Link to fields.

Exactly. When I enter the Payments.Category field, those Category values in ProvCat where Provider is ‘Baker’ are displayed. After selecting ‘21Cat’ in Payments.Category, I should see the three Services associated with ‘21Cat’ in CatSvc. I see nothing.

I’m not aware of any spelling mistakes, or any errors in crating the formula. The only difference I can see is the Payments.Provider is a Choice field, whereas Payments.Category is a dynamic Choice field.

OK

Payments is Choice, not dynamic choice.

You described how I wanted it to work. I never got it to work, which is why I thought that switching to 'dynamic Choice' was a good idea - I liked the word 'dynamic' before I tried to implement it in Ninox. My every day interactions with the databse will always be sequential - Provider to Category to Service.

I think that the one time fee is reasonable, and I'm quite prepared to fork out in order to 'play' with Ninox. My current problem is that I'm trying to implement  a 'work' (persoanl, but still work) solution. At the moment, I'm looking at using my klutzy Numbers workbook, becuase it doesn't look that I'm going to find the solution right now in Niinox.

Anyway, thanks for looking at it.

I did, but I thought that I had everything solved when I got one cascade to work, I hadn't tried the second. Mayabe I should give it another try. I've also finally got someone from Ninox who seems to be prepared to have a look at the dynamic Choice problem, so will see where that goes. Any way, my free trial has expired , so will probably be off or a few days.

I've looked at this a number of times,and the only plausible answer I can come with to explain why the second formaula doesn't produce the desired result is that it's not picking p the value in Payments.Category. Anybody have any thoughts on this.

I said, acouple of posts ago, that 'Payments' was a Choice field. I meant 'Provider'.

I had a 15 minute session with Maria Luisa Pasini, in which she solved my most significant problem - the others I can live with. So, ’Grazie Maria’ and  ‘Obrigada Maria’!

There was nothing wrrong with my formula in Service - it just didn't work (bug).

She gave me the following formula.

let t := number(Category);

let c := first(select ProvCat where Id = t).Category;

select CatSvc where Category = c

So,I'll keep on trying. I agree App Store version is the best bet.

Nothing wrong except fro me spelling 'wrong' as 'wrrong'!