John Dow - Software Services and Products

WINDEMO
1-866-JTDSOFTware (1-866-583-7638)
6560 Rosemoor St, Pittsburgh, PA 15217-3026


Home
Who We Are
Java Migration
Q&A Options
Tools and Utilities
Order Products
Product Demos
Downloads
Services
Links
Contact Us
Contents

 

WINDEMO - Demonstration of DTFWIN

DTFWIN enhances Q&A Windows.
WinDemo implements a simple order entry system that has an ORDER database, a CUSTOMER database, and a STOCK database. (It was derived from the demo for DTFDATA. In fact, if you want, you can run the WinDemo order entry system using Q&A 5 as well as Q&A Windows, just to compare and to see how the same application can be accessed from DOS as well as from Windows.)
I have configured the demo so that all three databases are opened initially and placed as you see them here. I realize that this is not a very pleasing layout, as I've done it in a 640 x 480 format (just in case anyone want to run the demo on a VGA monitor) so the CUSTOMER and STOCK databases are pretty small. Ignoring the fact that this needs a larger resolution to look half-way decent, notice that you see 3 databases at once. You also see a menu across the top. That's the WINDEMO menu, not a Q&A menu.

 

I've cut away the right and bottom parts of the screen image to make this presentation less cluttered. Focus your attention at the menu at the top now. See what happens when you pull down the File menu choice on the WinDemo menu. It has two selections for printing, print Portrait and print Landscape. These selections correct an awkward deficiency in Q&A Windows by making it very easy to select the paper orientation when printing a database form. If you're on the ORDER database form and then choose one of these print options from the WinDemo menu, the ORDER database information will print appropriately.
What is really noteworthy about these menu options is that the menu itself and the action to be taken are defined in the WINDEMO.INI file. That means that you can define your own menu to really customize your Q&A Windows application more than ever before possible.
I've skipped over the New order and Old order menu choices for the moment. The Lookup Databases menu choice leads to a sub menu, with Customer and Stock as choices. Customer has 3 choices: Add New, Search/Update, and Delete. (Stock has the same 3 choices.) As above, the menu and sub menu and choices are all defined in the INI file. 

 

Here you can see what happens when you select the Navigation menu choice from the WinDemo menu. A list of places to go pops up. On the left are descriptions of places to go. On the right are database names and forms and, out of sight, even specific fields. When you select one of these rows, the focus will change to the appropriate database, form, and field. This application is of course very simple, but in a complicated one you could use this to go directly to the appropriate database (even if it's not open) and go right to the data item in question. It not only is a time saver but makes it easy to find something if you're not sure where it is. Naturally, the choices for the navigation option are defined by you, in the INI file.
 
Now let's select New order from the menu. When you do this, WinDemo.exe (that is, the DTFWIN program created for the demo) switches to the ORDER database and puts it into New Record mode. It knows to do this because that's how the WINDEMO.INI file has defined the New Order menu selection. Doing this triggers the programming in the database and it puts up the dialog you see, asking the user to enter a restriction string to do a customer search. You can see that I've entered "Mc". With DTFWIN, a Q&A Windows database can put up dialogs and messages boxes, such as you see here. This is an enhancement that DTFWIN makes possible; Q&A Windows alone does not have this ability. This particular dialog is associated with a list box, which is what we'll see next. 

These are the customers whose names begin with "Mc". I've clicked on "McCloskey" because that's who I want. Notice that the list box shows the customer name, age, date of birth, and hobbies. (This is just a demo that in fact uses a customer database designed to show what DTFDATA can do. In a real-life order entry system, you probably would be more interested in the payment history and current balance of your customers than in their hobbies.) But once again, what you see in this list box is defined by you. You can have as many of these pop ups as you want. They can be activated under program control, as this one is. But they can also be activated by the user by pressing a function key or clicking on a button next to a field.

To put up this list box, DTFWIN went into the CUSTOMER database and exported the appropriate information for customers whose names begin with "Mc" and then put up the pick list. DTFWIN can do this because it actually has DTFDATA built right in to it.
The advantage of this type of pick list (over the Q&A 5 XUSERSELECT, which incidentally is not available in Q&A Windows databases) is that you can see not only the name but also other information, including (in this simple demo) the age, birth date, sex, and hobbies. You could easily display other information. You can have a person's name, full address, birth date, two or three telephone numbers, social security number, date of last purchase and amount, etc. etc.

As this next screen shows, you finally see the Q&A database itself. Up to this point, you've only seen dialogs generated by WINDEMO.EXE under the control of the database. Now it's time to actually enter the order. As you see, the customer selected above, McCloskey, has been filled in. That happened under program control. Having done the popup list box, the information about McCloskey was returned to the program and it filled in the fields.
 

 

This is an example of a message box that you can now pop up under the control of the database programming. This is similar to using Q&A 5's @MsgBox. You have a choice of buttons that can appear in the box, including "OK" and "Cancel", and which button the user selects is passed back into the program. In this case, the message is generated after the customer has been selected if the user doesn't know to click on the "Detail" button but presses Enter instead.
 
At this point, we're at the detail form and ready to enter the first item. I've programmed the database to automatically put up the list box to select an item from stock. Since I have such a small stock, it just brings up the entire list. You could of course do with stock as was done with customers, namely restrict the search by the name of the item. The columns in this list are: description of the item, the price of each item, how many are in stock, how many have been removed from stock so far, and the item number. You can see that I have moved the cursor down to select what appears to be the healthiest item on the list, veggie burgers.

 

After pressing Enter to make this selection, the next step in the order entry process is to enter the quantity this customer wants. This screen image shows that the quantity "5" was entered and the price and extended cost have been computed from the quantity. Not shown here, for brevity, is the pop up list for the second item to be ordered. (There is no need to show it again, as it's exactly the same list of stock items that was seen when filling in the first item.) This time I clicked on Cancel as I only wanted the veggie burgers. Here you see the message that appears at this point, instructing me what to do.
After replying "OK" to clear the message box, I then clicked on the post button. This caused the program to post this order to the STOCK database. Unlike Q&A 5's posting, DTFWIN can post multiple fields in multiple records at once. It also, as a byproduct, can return information from the posted records showing the result of the posting. This last screen shot shows that display. It shows the status of Veggie Burgers in the STOCK database after applying the order for 5 burgers. The number on hand has been reduced to 995 from 1,000 and the number sold so far has been increased from 0 to 5.

 
While this obviously isn't a fully functional order entry system, it demonstrates the various capabilities necessary for such as system. That includes the ability to put up messages, multicolumn popup list boxes, and posting. The DTFWIN program with built-in DTFDATA provides power and flexibility to Q&A Windows that meets and goes beyond the power and flexibility of Q&A 5. 
 

If you have Q&A Windows 4.06 (the version that's compatible with Q&A 5 for DOS) you might want to download the demo.

The README.TXT file instructs you how to install and run the demo.

The OVERVIEW.TXT file has an overview of DTFWIN's features.

The DTFWIN.NEW file has a history of the features that have been incorporated into DTFWIN.

To learn the most about DTFWIN, read the highly detailed  DEVGUIDE.TXT file (the developer's guide) to see exactly how you make all these things happen.

Last modified:6/14/2006