1. BASE table random access? 2. multiple tables in one rpt?

[PRR]

First time user with lots of DB experience on home and commercial machines DB's looking for replacement for MAC / Borland Reflex DB's. Have been unable to find the answers to the following (may not be looking in the right docs):
1. Can BASE in a report randomly retrieve a record from one table using a key retrieved from a different table in the same DB? Example: Expenses table record contains (among other fields) an expenses code & date. Expense code table records contain expense code and description. I wish to see total expenses for each code but print the report with the expense code desc along with the code. Sort/retrieve expense records and total by expense code and retrieve code desc from Expense code table?? I do not want to link to 2 tables.

2. Can table retrieval variables be feed to a report to be used to retrieve data? Example: (Using the DB from # 1. above) I wish to see all expenses for a certain code and date range and for each execution of the report use different date range and codes without rebuilding the report. Am willing to create a single record table for a control record if that would work. But how to make the report retrieve Expense records using date range and code from the control record / table??? Available examples / doc??

These processes were pretty simple to do in Reflex but I have been unable to figure out if they are possible in BASE. If these 2 processes are not possible I will have to look for a different DB system.
Thanks in advance to anyone who can help / point me to examples or docs or can confirm that these are not possible in BASE.
PRR

[pluby]

I am not very familiar with the finer details of setting up Base reports, but I am familiar with how Base's report tool interacts with the database. In general, most reports like to iterate through the records of a single SQL query. In your case, what this means is that if you probably need to do a join (link) between the two tables.

I am not sure why you don't want to link tables, but Base's underlying HSQLDB is a database designed to work like other RDBMS such as MySQL and PostgreSQL so that if you create an index on the joining field (e.g. the expense code) in both tables, the join is rather speedy.

If you are looking for more programmatic access to iterate through records in queries, then I don't think Base is the tool for you and you may want to look at MySQL or PostgreSQL and use a scripting language like PHP or compile language like Java to iterate through one or more query's records.

Patrick

[pluby]

[Lorinda]

[pluby]

[Lorinda]

I think so, although I'm a little out of my depth. The instructions for the indexes I know about can be found here.

Base makes indexes for primary and foreign keys automatically.

Lorinda

[pluby]