SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

[Perry Mowbray]

What you can do however, is to select multiple items and apply formatting to them as a group

-PPLandry (December 03, 2007, 09:41 PM)

Which would work even better with a Format Painter 

Am I right in remembering that Conditional Formating is planned as well?

[PPLandry]

Am I right in remembering that Conditional Formating is planned as well?

-Perry Mowbray (December 04, 2007, 05:34 AM)

Yes, conditional column formatting is planned (red if greater than zero, bold if DueDate < now, etc). In fact, very little is left before implementing it... no user request has been the main reason why it is being pushed forward.

[Perry Mowbray]

A couple of quick questions:

• Do you have a page that explains the field set up screen? There were some options there that don't seem to be used by the default database.
• Is there a File Requester that can be attached to a field (that is a path type)? Or is drag and drop a possibility? I know you can drop onto the grid and a new record will be created, but it'd be handy to be able to fill specific fields.
• Any thought about having child grids that are different to the parent (similar to how Access will display a related table), so for example you could have an invoice grid with children that are invoice items that display a different set of fields??

[PPLandry]

>Do you have a page that explains the field set up screen? There were some options there that don't seem to be used by the default database.

Nothing yet, but I'll add one today. I had been postponing this since that form will be re-worked. It is rather oldish

>Is there a File Requester that can be attached to a field (that is a path type)? Or is drag and drop a possibility? I know you can drop onto the grid and a new record will be created, but it'd be handy to be able to fill specific fields.

The newly added field URL can be used for that. There is also separate fields FilePath and FileName.

>Any thought about having child grids that are different to the parent (similar to how Access will display a related table), so for example you could have an invoice grid with children that are invoice items that display a different set of fields??

This is certainly possible. It is already on the wish list. Currently, you can use separate grids or use forms to view information not in the columns. You could arrange colums to have the common information locked on the left, then basic parent information, then child information in right-most columns. 1-click could be sufficient to scroll columns from parent info to child info. That combined with forms...

But improvements to that aspect is planned.

[superboyac]

I made a new grid for another artist "Gene Harris" using the same fields as before "MusicItem".  I imported all the items and organized them.  Then I tried to have the new grid show only the Gene Harris items, but I can't seem to get that top bar filter to do anything for me.  Whenever I try, i get the big red error bar on the bottom.  How can i only show the Gene Harris items?  (see attached screenshot)
SQLNotes...what is it exactly?

Also, let's say I have a bunch of items using the MusicItem field, but I in the grid, i only want to show certain specific albums that have no real logic to it.  Say, some of this artist, some of that artist, but nothing I can put a "rule" or filter for.  How can I pick and choose what is displayed?  It seems to me like you can't manually pick and choose, everything has to be formally defined by fields and filters.  Am I right?

[PPLandry]

1. You're not too far. In your filter, you must say which field to filter:
 MusicItem="Gene harris". You can also use the Alpha toolbar: MusicItem and click the G or type Gene in the associated text box
2. You can use the Check field (or another). Simply check the items you want and set the source (or filter) to Check

[superboyac]

1. You're not too far. In your filter, you must say which field to filter:
 MusicItem="Gene harris". You can also use the Alpha toolbar: MusicItem and click the G or type Gene in the associated text box
2. You can use the Check field (or another). Simply check the items you want and set the source (or filter) to Check

-PPLandry (December 04, 2007, 10:33 AM)

1)  It still doesn't work for me.  There are 3 places to type in the bar, and none of them worked.  I opened up the alpha toolbar and type "gene", but you see how my top-level item is "Gene Harris"?  It only filtered the sub items and only the albums that had the words "gene harris" in the album title, which is only a few of them.  How come it doesn't show everything under Gene Harris since the top level matches the filter?
2)  Here's the problem with the check.  The check box would just be another field right?  What if I have thousands of artists and I want to have several grids showing a different collection of artists.  Do I have to make a separate check box field for each grid?  Because, if I understand correctly, the check box field (and it's state of checked/unchecked) will be stored with the item itself.  So, for one grid, it will be checked, and for another it needs to be unchecked.

Is there any plans to have a more "manual" way of showing what appears in the grid?  I mean, it's very powerful to have the filters there for situations where your selection can be defined by logical means (all albums which this artist appears on, all albums made after 1995, etc.).  But what if you want to make some grids based on purely arbitrary and random choices?  I understand that all the items are stored in the database and the grids only display what you want to see from that database.  Is there a way (now or planned for the future) to be able to pick and choose individual, random items from the database pool and stick it inside a grid?

[PPLandry]

>Is there any plans to have a more "manual" way of showing what appears in the grid? 

Search has been expanded. Simply type in the list of items (or parts of), or list of IDItem and it will display them.

>Is there a way (now or planned for the future) to be able to pick and choose individual, random items from the database pool and stick it inside a grid?

Yes, simply create a new grid, name it Set1. Open your main grid and have them side-by-side (right-click on tab and choose move to...). Now drag-drop items from one to the other (Press CTRL to not remove it from the first grid). There is some fine-tuning to do on my part ot make it work smoothly, but this is another way.

[PPLandry]

2 pages were added to the wikispace:

1- How to use SQLNotes fields
2- How to import data from other programs (in particular Outlook) into SQLNotes

http://sqlnotes.wikispaces.com/

[superboyac]

PPL, how do I copy multiple items within SQL?  What if I want to copy some items from one column into another colomn, and I also want to retain the tree structure?  Look at my screenshot below, I want to copy all the musicitem data into the Item column and also retain the tree structure.  It doesn't work if I select them all and do a copy/paste.

I don't know if SN already has the ability, but there should be several ways to copy/paste within the program, kind of like Excel's "paste special".  For example, copying an item including all children item, copying an item without children item, copying only the formatting of an item, etc.

[PPLandry]

This feature will be added. Currently, you can do with in Field Properties:
1- Select the item field
2- In Equation enter = MusicItem
3- Click Update
4- Remove the equation from the Equation field
5- Close the Field Properties dialog.

[superboyac]

This feature will be added. Currently, you can do with in Field Properties:
1- Select the item field
2- In Equation enter = MusicItem
3- Click Update
4- Remove the equation from the Equation field
5- Close the Field Properties dialog.

-PPLandry (December 10, 2007, 10:55 AM)

If I do it this way, is it going to copy all the MusicItem's into Item for the entire database, or just the ones in this grid?

[PPLandry]

All... This is not what you want to do?

[Armando]

2 pages were added to the wikispace:

1- How to use SQLNotes fields
2- How to import data from other programs (in particular Outlook) into SQLNotes

http://sqlnotes.wikispaces.com/

-PPLandry (December 04, 2007, 08:11 PM)

Nice !!
Thanks Pierre. I didn't receive any notification from the "thread"... so I just found out now...

[superboyac]

All... This is not what you want to do?

-PPLandry (December 10, 2007, 11:25 AM)

Well, in this case it works.  But I only want to copy the musicitems for these particular items, not the entire database.  What if I had another grid somewhere and I'm using both the MusicItem AND the Item fields?  Then I don't want one to overwrite the other.  I just want to copy/paste for a selected few.


Oh!  I forgot about one of my favorite feature requests...
Will there be a way to password-protect certain items/grids/databases?  Let's say I wanted to keep an outline of personal information, and I wanted to protect a couple of items that had a password, could I do that?  Similarly, I might want to add protection to individual grids or even an entire database.

Zoot allows you to password-protect the database.  Mybase allows pretty good flexibility in that you can protect the individual notes with a password, and you can also protect the whole database file with another password.  I talked about these in my notetaking review a little.

[PPLandry]

Copy: This will be added, for sure.

Passwords: Currently you can password protect/encrypt the entire database, not individual items/grids.
It is planned to add item/grid permission management, based on the itemOwner

[superboyac]

I think I found a bug:
In the Options, where it says "Create backup on program close", I keep changing it to "Yes" and it keeps going back to No.  That's why I didn't have backups saved that one time.  The setting doesn't stick.

[tomos]

I think I found a bug:
In the Options, where it says "Create backup on program close", I keep changing it to "Yes" and it keeps going back to No.  That's why I didn't have backups saved that one time.  The setting doesn't stick.

-superboyac (December 10, 2007, 11:40 AM)

same here - I hadnt noticed cause it's set by default to do backup every 5 mins

[PPLandry]

confirmed, I'm working on it right now

[Armando]

Okay. this is not urgent as I'm working on something else right now, but I'm not able to import my Outlook contacts  properly. I believe that there's a problem with the long notes I've included in some of them + other fields that might contain these characters --> " , [tab].

Wouldn't it be possible (eventually) to import data through a different format than “the tab/coma separated values” one ?

Okay --> Pierre, I just saw your comment on the wiki page concerning live sync between SQLNotes and Outlook. So I guess I'll have to wait for that.

[PPLandry]

Yes, more formats will be added, but if tab-delimited does not work, can you try comma separated ?

[Armando]

Yes, more formats will be added, but if tab-delimited does not work, can you try comma separated ?

-PPLandry (December 10, 2007, 11:57 AM)

I,ve tried all of them. All give me errors and data is just spread everywhere.

[PPLandry]

I'd be interesting to determine if it's Outlook that can't generate properly formatted tab and csv delimited files or SQLNotes that doesn't read them correctly...

[PPLandry]

I think I found a bug:
In the Options, where it says "Create backup on program close", I keep changing it to "Yes" and it keeps going back to No.  That's why I didn't have backups saved that one time.  The setting doesn't stick.

-superboyac (December 10, 2007, 11:40 AM)

This is now fixed in the daily build

[Armando]

I'd be interesting to determine if it's Outlook that can't generate properly formatted tab and csv delimited files or SQLNotes that doesn't read them correctly...

-PPLandry (December 10, 2007, 12:01 PM)

My feeling is that it's Outlook's that's improper. When I open the csv (or tcv)  text file I can clearly see that some fields are just not where they should be (especially the "notes" field, it seems -- when you open an Outlook contact, that field actually doesn't have any name!)