Add-On Components for FlashCONNECT

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FlashCONNECT from Raining Data contains a number of callable subroutines which make it a very powerful tool for creating alternative interfaces into the MultiValue DBMS environment. At Nebula R&D, we've created a couple new subroutines, adding functionality currently not available in FlashCONNECT, and giving the developer new options for web development.

NebulaFCCreateSection and NebulaFCReplaceSection are similar in functionality to w3HTMLInsertSection, but they give the developer much more control over the results. They also address some gaps in the way FlashCONNECT deals with templates created by web developers, and they are of particular use in projects where multiple lines of similar data are being generated.

We are going to show you a few examples of why these are such great additions to the FlashCONNECT suite of subroutines, and then we'll show you how to use them.

NebulaFCReplaceSection

With subroutines like w3HtmlInsert and w3HtmlInsertSection, FlashCONNECT assumes that you are building a page from the top down, filling in the ##content## section of a master template. There is no allowance for generating detail into a page and then putting information at the top of the page which is dependent upon the detail - such as totals and other summary information, Next/Previous links, or important messages for the user based on data found during the process of generating detail lines. And once you've executed the call to w3HtmlHeader, you can no longer access the header for the document.

Example 1 demonstrates such a situation.

Big Computer Company

Sales Order
Order: 12345		Ship Date: 01-Jan-2003	Order Total: 800.00
Line#	Prod ID	Description	Qty	Amount
1	p-24	CPU 2.4GHz	1	300
2	m-12	Memory PC2100 512MB	2	150
3	v-123	Video 128MB	1	350

Have a Nice Day!

Example 1

Sample 1 shows templates and some BASIC code which might be used to generate the output shown in Example 1. These may help to clarify the points being made here.

In Example 1 we see that the Order Total contains the accumulated total from the Amount column in the table. Unless that total was available in a header record (as is usually the case) we would need to run through all of the detail lines, generate the total, and then go through all of the lines again to generate the output. We also see the Ship Date, but what if the ship date were dependent on the availability of all of the line items in the order. Again, we would need to go through all of the line items first, display the ship date, then loop through the output for all of the detail again. We could just loop once and keep all the data in a variable in memory, but that is very cumbersome, as well as being a problem if the user is paging through large numbers of detail items.

NebulaFCReplaceSection allows you to generate the entire page and then set the Order Total and Ship Date at the top.

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