I haven't done a very good job of keeping this blog active.  What can I say -- we are all busy. 

So I best tell you what I have been busy with .... I started work on a new version SQLGridSelectedView in the mid-Summer and have been slowly working on the various peices I wanted to improve - a lot of stuff under the hood needed attention and still there is more I want to address, but I have a working version that I need to release so I can get the customer feed back.

There are 2 major additions to this version of SQLGridSelectedView - the re-designed Setting screen and the abililty to edit records.  The re-design form meant re-doing all the documentation and screen shots - a two-week effort alone, but the result is worth it. Hope you agree.

Well I best talk about my approach to the Record editing... I actually launch a separate form that displays all the fields and allows the user to enter values.  I took this approach as I believe it can be a bit more flexible than inline editing.  I require the user to provide the Insert, Update, and Delete SQL commands that will be used by the module.  Also the user must define a Select command used to determine what columns will be inserted or updated.  So, you can display 5 fields in the display grid, but when Editing the record show more (or less) fields. 

Another feature of this new version is something I call in-line functions.  They are functions that I will perform against a column of data.  Currently two function are defined: HTMLDecode and MakeLink.  HTMLDecode will remove the HTML encoding found in some database tables (like DNN's event table) - no need for the user to create some SQL Function.  The other function, MakeLink,  does just that - if a column of data is a valid url, then MakeLink will generate the appropriate HTML to display a link in the resulting grid - no need for HMTL in the SQL Select Statement.  The Link Text can come from a differnt column too!

Recently I recieved a lot of requests for Column totals. So, I added a way to implement column totals without doing any real weird SQL processing.  Based on a column list supplied, I will process the resulting data rows from the primary select and calculate the total.  I also allow the user to place a label - like "total' - on the same row.

Well I hope you enjoy the new module - I hope to have it fully tested and read by the November 1st.

Paul.