OK, I know this seems like a minor upgrade, but it was actually quite complicated. Your list of courses in the My Courses section is now sorted. Woo hoo!
For those of you who care about the technical details... the information is actually stored in FIVE separate tables (customers, orders, order details, courses, course categories) which are in 5 separate database files. The courses can't just be sorted in alphabetical order by course name, because then you get "Access 201" followed by "Access 2010 Beginner 1" followed by "Access 301" which really doesn't work. So each course has a SortOrder variable.
Plus, each course CATEGORY has a SortOrder variable so I can list those in the order I want. So in order to get YOUR courses to sort properly in a single list, I have to read all of these variables in with four different recordsets (and some DLOOKUPS) and store the data in a Temp table so I can read it all back sorted properly. You may notice it's about a half-second slower than it was before (depending on the number of courses you have) but it's not bad at all.
If all of these tables were in the SAME database file, I could simply join them and use an ORDER BY statement, but I keep them in separate database files to make it easier to update. If I add a course or a category, I just change my local MDB file and FTP it up to the server. Keeps the file sizes smaller. Can't JOIN multiple tables from different database FILES in ASP, so this method was necessary. I thought about using multidimensional arrays to minimize database writes, but this was was easier to code. :)
OK, that's the end of today's technobabble. Back to work. I'm still working on the Email Seminar, but I think I'm going to take a break from it today and record Access Expert 18 which I want to have finished by the end of the year. Hope to have that ready tomorrow or Tuesday. Seminar by the end of the week.
13 years ago
