Simple Data Entry Apps

[jldum]

Hi there,

I would like to know whether some of you have already used DAI to provide "easy" dataentry capabilities ?
Is it worth digging a little bit more into it ? Or will it turn down to a dead end road?

Awaiting reaction
regards

JL D

[Eddy Kleinjan]

Hi JL,

You can develop forms and/or list edits that will allow users to enter data, when you have given them all the rights to do so and explicitly designed a reports for data entry.

For data validation, you can use the JavaScript functions ValidateForm and ValidateList that you can find on the 'Rules' tab when you are in Design mode. You also can supply key lists for lookup columns so that the user can pick values that are based on other lists.

Some of our customers have developed complete data entry applications with Dynamic AI acting as the front-end. So you can come a long way, but you have to keep in mind that Dynamic AI's is not meant to replace professional application development tools.

Eddy Kleinjan

[admin]

Hi JL,

I realize that you're interested in the experiences of other users rather than from us at Dynamic AI. I hope someone will respond, but many of our larger customers would probably not respond on the forum, so I'll give you my thoughts.

I have worked with 2 commercial companies that have used Dynamic AI for data entry as one of the main reasons for picking Dynamic AI - they were both smallish - up to 5 or so simultaneous users. One was a sports club that were registering their group activities for several fitness center locations - an interim process they used while waiting for integration with a system in development. They got the work done fairly fast and users did not have any problems learning. The other did regular maintenance of their webapplication - sort of distributed translations of text snippets.
Most of our customers though, do use Dynamic AI for some sort of "casual data entry" - meaning that they maintain a budget, or map group names to accounts etc.

I know you have looked at the Dynamic AI form as a way on entering data, but have you seen the list-edit entry? It is fast and easy to learn. Users can use copy/paste and work pretty much as if entering data in Excel. (see http://support.dynamicai.com/images/screenshots/boa/listEditExample.swf)

Hope that was helpful

Best regards

Bo Andersen

[Bob Cergol]

Hi JL,

I'm relatively new to Dynamic AI (started last December) and have been concentrating on its reporting capabilities -- that surpass anything I've ever seen. I am also an applications developer having written complete manaufacturing management systems. I do have plans to see what I can do with DAI for data entry, but my sense of it is that extensive business process logic -- triggered by data entry/editing -- would require really advanced expertise using combination of clever javascript code and SQL stored procedures. I have a hunch that is what Eddy was referring to when he said it was not meant to replace an application programming language. (I happen to use Visual Dataflex -- and while admitting I am ignorant of writing javascript or sophisticated SQL procedures -- it is still hard for me to imagine how I could implement a lot of my application processing logic solely with DAI. Nevertheless, now I can't imagine using an application programming language to attempt the sophistication of reporting that DAI makes so relatively effortless.

Personally, I am looking forward to being able to integrate DAI reporting directly into my Visual Dataflex applications using some new soon-to-be released classes for Visual Dataflex.

Regards,
Bob Cergol