Presentation of the final database

You can download the final version of the 4D application whose construction is described in detail in this guide:

    --> Download the "My first 4D database" application

The purpose of the database that we are creating is to manage interventions performed by technicians.

The requests expressed by our virtual project manager are:

• The possibility for several users to work at the same time (thus in client/server mode)
• The ability to access data using a Web interface
• The ability to save and access intervention reports
• The ability to send e-mails to notify changes, tasks, and so on.

In terms of the interface, we proposed implementing a palette grouping together the basic functions.

The general model and the buttons are provided to us by a graphic designer.

The purpose of these example databases is to keep a simple database model, in other words:

• one intervention per technician
• one intervention performed for a single location
• a technician can perform several interventions
• and several interventions can be carried out on the same location.

We designed these example databases in order to cover most of the subjects that will be useful to begin working with the right tools and best practices, by simply addressing concepts that sometimes seem complicated for beginners, such as processes or pointers.

In addition, the last videos will show you how to:

• publish your data on the Web in a simple way (but without covering aesthetics since the purpose is understanding the mechanisms involved and not learning web presentation techniques)
• create SVG pictures and integrate data from your database in them
• manage Blobs
• create components
• use your database in client/server mode
• make your database multilingual using the standard XLIFF.

In terms of presentation, on the left we have 5 ways to access different lists.

When you click on one of the 3 buttons on the left, the top series of buttons is visible with a strip of buttons specific to each list.

These buttons let you:

• either add a record to the list
• or see the compete list of records
• perform a multicriteria search
• select a certain number of records, using classic shortcuts if desired, and use them to create a selection; in other words, a list of records on screen on which you can perform actions
• sort this list according to different criteria, which may contain formulas
• print lists
• create custom reports where you can drag fields that you want to include, and when necessary taking related tables into account and adding sort criteria, then generating previews or cross tables
• print labels where you can add pictures and use different fonts according to the fields that are included
• and, of course, delete records.

On the list of interventions, you can use these buttons to create sets:

• interventions before 9:00 a.m.
• those that are completed
• and then use one of the 3 buttons here to find interventions that are completed that had a start time before 9:00 a.m.; here we see thirty.

The 4 buttons here, you will see later on, concern what we call "Named selections", which are similar to sets of records but that keep their sort order.

A statistics button that lets you calculate the intervention statistics for a given year in 2 different ways (with SQL commands and with 4D commands). You'll also see that this form here, is actually created in a process, which means that you can work on both windows simultaneously.

Next the integration of the 4D Write plugin gives us a word processor we can use to produce a report for the intervention we have chosen.

You'll see:

• the operation that lets you resize objects automatically according to the form size
• the information needed for sending an e-mail
• and a few additional elements, such as, how to manage events that let you do these sorts of things; it's a good thing to practice, you'll see, to be able to make a button move whenever the mouse moves over it so that you can never quite manage to click on it.

And also a few additional elements such as:

• creating SVG pictures that you can then integrate on the Web; here we draw a few elements,
  • a line
  • some formatted text
  • the list of our technicians; this is data that comes directly from our database
• and here a small schedule that, according to the settings, lets you:
  
  • display more or less information
  • browse by dates
  • and display, of course, information that comes from the database.
• Next, comes the possibility to:
  
  • start the Web server
  • test it
  • since the goal is not to make the interface, but to see how to extract information from the database with, in this case, technicians that you can click on and, for each technician, when we arrive on their specific page, we see the last 10 interventions that they performed.

The purpose of these examples was for you to understand the mechanisms in general and not the specific details of the Web like CSS, Javascript or HTML formatting.

And in the exercises, you also have a small form that lets you test the creation of variables that we'll use for:

• displaying messages
• understanding the way we're going to create variables in 4D. Here, we left a trace mode which lets you see how to access it and how it works
• assigning values to a variable
• multiplying strings of text
• declaring arrays
• assigning values to arrays
• and retrieving information from an array when necessary.

In this dialog box, more specifically, you'll see that all the warning messages call upon a component that was very simple for us to create, which opens horizons for creating tools that you can reuse in several different databases.

Now that we've covered the general presentation, we're going to move on to other videos that will allow you to form this tool.