Tip of the Month (October 2006)

Searching Using a Mutiple Column Key

When searching, you may want to search based on more than one column. For example, your table may have two columns, LAST_NAME and FIRST_NAME, and you want to find a record for a particular person. Although Visual CE's RECORD | SEARCH only allows you to specify the value for one column, it is possible to search based on two or three columns.

Instead of using RECORD | SEARCH to find the record, define a filter (OPTION | FILTER | CUSTOM). For the first criteria, specify LAST_NAME = 'Jones'. For the second criteria, specify FIRST_NAME = 'Fred'. Make sure you select the "Match all" radio button in the filter definition. You can pre-define these filters using EDIT | FILTERS in the Visual CE development environment.

When you activate the filter, only the qualifying records will be displayed.

Note: As an alternative, you can combine the two columns into a single column. See the tip Creating a Multi-Column Key.