Resolving a bill of materials

The data structure you describe is recursive. Recursive data structures are wild animals that are not easy to tame. In CS textbook, the standard solution is to write a program involving recursive procedures, matching the recursive structure of the data. And the result is obtained like by magic. The actual mechanism underlying the magic is that the implementation of recursive procedures invariably involves some kind of stack.

I don't know (yet) if Ninox allows one to build recursive functions. But there is another solution: one can write an iterative program, and take care of the recursive aspects by defining and managing an explicit stack. In Ninox, a stack can be simulated by an array.

You are probably more interested in a practical solution than in a lenghty lecture. So I have build a small database demonstrating the concept, available at the URL below.

In the problem at hand, two different types of information must be pushed on the stack, so I used two arrays operating in parallel. Since the nature of the problem is the traversal of a n-ary tree, I did include two versions of the program, traversing the tree in two different ways, yielding the result in two different orders.

https://app.box.com/s/lx6gaizzy9xuj4mm290z5pcsthg18sdt

Hi everybody, the example above works great. However, now I want to do this "bottom-up". I.e., I want to open a PART and see, how many products I can produce with the stock available.

I assume I need to have a look in the bill of material of one specific product. Then find out how often PART A is used in that BOM, and then divide the amount available in stock with the amount required for a product (correct?). But I don't get it how to write a function / script for that. Can anybody help?

Kind regards,

Fabi