Help!!! I am a new Paradox user and I am not a programmer or a techie. I've been working here for 6 months and have been able to figure out how to create basic forms and reports but I'm trying to find training or manuals that will get me to the next level. Any suggestions? Thanks.
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Get your hands on Mike's book on programing for paradox 9. It's an excellant starting point. Check out the prestwood store, there is usuall a copy for sale out there.
If you have a specific question on how to do something in paradox you can always post your question to this Board and one of use is sure to have tackled something similar in the past. At least we can point you to several possible solutions.
Without looking at the data this is somewhat difficult, but we can possibly talk through this. First, I am going to assume that you have one table containing all your data. Each record has an name field to identify the member/contributer. The table also contains a membership date field and a renewal date field. It sounds like the distinction between a member and a contributer is possibly a little indistinct. Is there a field that designates a member and a seperat field that designates the individual as a contributer?
I cant be sure but it seems to me that possible this table should be split into at least two tables. One for the member/contributer identifing information and a second to contain the contribution history.
Quit a bit of what you are looking for can be accomplished in a fairly simple report using filters and group bands. This would be fairly inflexable but quick.
So, before I make any more guesses. How do you distinguish a member from a contributer? How do you distinguish the levels fo membership and levels of contributers?
Probably the best way to send a report would be to email it to me. However without the datatables the report would not work. Perhaps a screen shot of the report would work?
The correct way to design a database is to have each table handle the data for the different objects in your application. So in your case you should probably have table for data identifing an individual. I would assume that an individual can have only one membership level so that could be included in this table. It sounds like an individual can be multiple types of contributors, so this would probably be best put into another table and linked back to the individual table. The contributions should be contained in a third table and linked to the contributor table. This would allow you to track contributions over time
Have you been able to locate a copy of Mike's "Power programming for Paradox 9" It is really a great text for someone just picking up Paradox and it is appropriate for all versions that followed 9.
Thanks for all your suggestions. We have a database with membership information and I want to be able to pull up reports on a members giving history and their membership history. Short term I am looking for reports that will pull everyone that renewed or became a new member in the last month as well as gave a contribution. The funky part is where I want the report to separate the members from the contributors, them separate the levels of membership as well as levels of contributions and then still sort them in alphabetical order. I think I have figured out a way if I add a columns putting in a grouping code for each level of membership and use the grouping feature (because our membership levels are not in alphabetical order), but that's a lot of data entry that I don't want to do if it's not necessary.
I keep seeing web sites where people give answers in code but I don't even know where to put the code for a report or where to begin. Is there help for me? I would love to take a local class but I cannot find any nearby, or even in the Continental US for that matter. Should I just try to learn SQL? will that help? Any suggestions are appreciated.
Our table probably should be divided into several tables but we are so far behind the curve. We didn't even have a form for data entry until about two months ago, and we have had Paradox for about 12 years, prior to that we were just entering the data into the raw database. The columns we would use in the report are as follows.
Title, First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, Jr., Sr., etc.,
then:
Current Membership Level (There are two different types of Memberships, Individual, which comprises 7 (seven) different levels and Corporate, which comprises four different levels, all of which would need to be divided in the report but are all notated in the same column.
then:
We have fields that mark who is a Contributor, Individual Contributor, Corporate Contributor or Foundation Contributor. This particular field is only marked with an X. the amount of the contribution is indicated in a field labled Contribution Amount and Contribution Date.
One of the main problems is that all information is on one line. I may have a record of a person who became a member but also gave a contribution. Or they are a member but their Foundation gave a contribution (oh by the way there is another column for Foundation Name). Usually in the same month that may not be a problem, but down the line I need to expand the dates of the report to the entire year and I'm not sure if that would create some conflicts.
Currently we compile all of this information manually in WordPerfect.
Thanks for your help, you are a trooper!!
Is it possible for me to attach a sample of a report, I tried to paste one into this page but it came out pretty distorted.
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