Tip of the Month (November 2003)

Creating a Multi-Column Key

When you sort the rows in a table, you have to tell Visual CE what column you want to sort on. But suppose you want to sort on more than just one column (for example, sort by LAST_NAME and, for those people with the same LAST_NAME, sort by FIRST_NAME)? Or what if you want to jump or fill in a grid keyed on a multi-column key?

Here's how to do it. In your table create another column (for example, FULL_NAME) and connect the column to a calculated control that concatenates the two values into a single value (for example, LAST_NAME & FULL_NAME). Note that the ampersand character (&) is the concatenation operator. Then you can sort, jump, or key on this new value.