Overview.

An online database is information about something contained together.
That information is available when you are connected to the internet.
We have imagined different scenarios where you might want to hold information. We have tried to keep the information about them quite simple.
We then created screens to allow you to work through these scenarios and hopefully help you envisage how your information will look and be handled.
We work through one of these scenarios below as an illustration of how the screens function.

If you are the sort of person that just likes to try things out rather than being walked through them, feel free to try out the examples by taking the examples option from the top of this screen.

How to use the screens.

There is a format to the list and detail screens, when you understand how to use this format to enter and view information, all of the screens in your project use the same methods.
This page takes you through an example that we build up based around boats.

You can run this boats example yourself if you require. Click the examples option at the top of this page, then "Boats Menu". The Simple Boat Maintenance is the one we use first.Alternatively if you click this button it will open in a new tab. Open boats example in new tab

You will find there is a slight delay going into a project for the first time, such as the boats example as it sets itself up. This is not the case when you go back into it.

A basic example for illustration.

The scenario to show you our boat example.

You want to maintain a list of the boats that you own.
This should have the boat name, its type, and the colour it is painted.
These 3 pieces of information we hold for each boat are kept together.
We call the information about the the boat, the 'boat file'

There are two separate maintenance screens. (You may prefer the terms panels or pages or forms.)

The List Screen

The first is a list screen, this shows all the boats one above the other.

You have various options across the top of the screen area. If you click add you will see the second screen to add information about a new boat.
If you click one of the other options, for example 'change', you then need to press 'select' next to the boat you wish to change the information for. When you press 'select' you see the second screen.
For this example we now click the Add button.

The Detail Screen.

You now see the second screen.
This second screen is the detail screen and can show much more detail than the list if required.
This is all of the pieces of information about the selected item, it would have been too cluttered to put all of it on the list screen. (Well there is only the boat colour that was not displayed on the list in this example, but you see the principle.)
For this example we clicked the Add button, and have now entered the details of a new boat to include called Cordelia.
When we click the add button below the entry, Cordelia will be included.
If we did not click Add, but instead we clicked the cancel button we would return to the list without adding an entry.

We did click add and find ourselves back on the list screen with the new entry included.
If we were not adding a new entry, but changing one or deleting one that already exists, the button on the detail screen would not read 'add' but would read 'update' or 'delete' instead.

Home, Projects etc.

At the top of the list screen are buttons to go to different web pages. The home button goes to the InfoInOut home page, the projects button goes to a list of the available projects. In the examples environment the other projects are the other examples. The last button goes to the (ProjectIntro) menu screen that lists the available options in the current project.

Click the last button to go to the current project menu For this example this is the Boats menu.

A more advanced example.

We have rewritten our boat example. The information stored (in the boat file) is the same, but we will expand the amount of information that relates to each boat.
In this example the extra information you want to maintain for each boat is a list of the people that crew it, the equipment on board and the places it has been.

Take the "More Advanced Boat Maintenance" option from the menu. As this is still the boat file, it lists the same boats as before (including any you may have added on the previous screen.) You now have more options across the top of the screen area.
But first you should notice other features that were not there.

Ordering and subsetting.

There is now a button next to the column title and a band that says subset to the left.
If you click the button, the list will be ordered by that column, from smallest to largest.
If you click the button again, the list will be ordered by that column, from largest to smallest.
If you enter a value in any of the boxes on the subset band, when you click away from that box the list will only show entries that include that value in that column.

You can see that because the boat type needs to show "La", it is only the motor launch records that are shown
The button by the boat name has been used to order the entries in descending boat name order.

Lower Level List Screens.

When you take one of the top options, for example the crew, and select the boat you see the crew that relate to that boat.

In this example the boat name is the "heading field" and is displayed before the lines.
If required there could have been extra options to go down another level, for example the duties for the crew member.

You may notice that there is now a button that says "Previous" next to the Boats Menu button. This will take you up a level, which means that as we are now looking at the crew belonging to the boat Cordelia, if you press the "Previous" button you will go back to the list of boats, from which you could select to look at the crew of a different boat or maybe the equipment assigned to Cordelia.
We have done this.

When you select the equipment option, and select the boat you will see the items of equipment that relate to that boat.

Paging.

When you take the equipment option the list screen is structured slightly differently to the list screens we have used before.
The list shows only five items,even though we have assigned a greater number of equipment items to the boat in our example (Cordelia).
There is a blank button on the top row, followed by a "Next button". If you click the next button then the next five items will be displayed. The blank button now says "Prev". If you press it then you will go back five items.
If there are no items to go forward to then the "Next" button shows blank. If there are no items to go backwards to then the "Prev" button shows blank.
If you click on a blank button, then it will try to find items. If an item had been added by someone else since the list was shown, this would now be found.
At the bottom left of the list is a button that says "5 to a page", if you press it then 15 items will be shown and it says "15 to a page". Click again and it is 50, click again and it goes back to 5.

Drop List.

From the equipment option when you select or add an item it goes into the detail screen as expected. Instead of typing in the item though you select it from a drop down list. This can show information from another file of information (an "equipment" file) or alternatively a short number of items in a list if the items will not change.
For this example we have created an Equipment file. You can change the contents of this by taking the "Equipment" option from the Boats Menu. The list on this screen will then reflect your changes. You will also note that because the boat name is the "heading field" and we are including an item of equipment for it, it is included without being typed in and it cannot be changed. To add equipment for a different boat, you would take the equipment option for that boat. The grey colour behind it denotes that it cannot be changed.

Validation.

The information you enter is checked to ensure it is acceptable.
This usually makes sure that you have not entered a letter where you have to enter a number and have not missed anything that has to be entered.
The message is displayed, both next to the entry with a problem and in a list of all problems found at the bottom of the page.

You will notice that on the example, one of the dates is displayed as a calendar picker, the other as a normal entry box. If an entry is required for either format, it must be an acceptable date. We generally provide a date picker as it avoids confusion over input date formats. If entering a date in a normal entry box you need to include slash ("/") separators and use the format dd/mm/yyyy.