Re: Text field lengths and external DataBases.

["Scott Johnson" <sjohnson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Roger,

There are many ways to do field validation.  Probably more ways than there
are ice cream flavors at Baskin&Robbins.  Most of the better ones seem to
use JavaScript on the Form to do the validation.  Go to the Sandbox on
Notes.net and search for validation.  If I remember correctly there is an
issue with JavaScript not working nicely in the 5.0.* Notes clients. On
browsers it works great. I think in Notes 6, JavaScript runs in the client
a lot better. Plus I think there are a couple of new events available in
the Notes 6 Client that help adding validation a lot easier.

A side question.  What are you using to "talk" back and forth between Notes
and DB2/400?  DECS? LEI? Home Grown?  We are in the middle of a project
where we are front ending the maintenance of our Product data in
Notes/Domino running on one iSeries. The Product Data is actually located
in DB2/400 on a different iSeries for fulfillment purposes.  I am up
against a real big wall in trying to decide how to shuttle the actual data
back and forth.  The two big things I have left on this project are data
movement and field validation.  I started work on it under 5, we are now
going to re-do it in Notes 6.  So I am hoping that 6 will make things
easier.

--
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Scott P. Johnson
Applications Development Team Coordinator
Microcomputer Development Specialist
IBM Certified Specialist - AS/400 RPG Programmer
Highsmith Inc.
W5527 Hwy 106, PO BOX 800
Fort Atkinson, WI 53538-0800
TEL:  920-563-9571                FAX:  920-563-7395
sjohnson@highsmith.com
www.highsmith.com
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Hello,

We have put a Domino/Notes face on a DB2 application using Domino 5.0.10
(soon Domino 6) and are having problems with text fields.

Since this is based on a DB2 application running on an iSeries the text
fields have a fixed length however in the Notes client the only way to
limit the input is by issuing an error message after the user's input
:-(  or by truncating :-( :-(  in the code. The users really hate having
to retype their text or guessing at how much will fit and usually end up
with very short lines that waste a lot of database space.

In addition there are areas where a memo is attached to a master record.
Again, with a DB2 backend this is structured as an unlimited number of
fixed length records, each representing a line.

Surely with the number of Domino applications interfacing with other
databases that use fixed length fields someone has developed a better
way of making the Notes client keep the fields compatible.

I would appreciate any code _snipits_ or addresses that could help with
these situations.

Thanks.

Roger Vicker, CCP

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