[Sigia-l] creating, displaying and editting one-to-many relationships

[Miriam Walker]

I'd appreciate some suggestions/links to screen designs on widgets and page layouts for creating, displaying and editing one-to-many relationships. 

I've got some pretty pre-defined hierarchical relationships and I'm trying to design data entry forms for users to build up those relationships. Trees seem pretty poor for data entry here and the nodes at each generation would be of different types. There are several variations on the problem:

(e.g. 1) the grandparent is a package of products. For each product we have several optional components. For some components users can choose only one option, for others they can choose as many as they like. Because the components are different for each product and the options are different for each component it is really hard to help users choose or even see what they've chosen.

(e.g. 2) We have lots of situations with three level data where a top level has many children(mid level) fields and only one of those mid level fields have lowest level children of their own. Our designers want to use tables to fit the most data on a screen but are having a nasty time displaying or editing the one mid-level field with associated lowest level fields. If we put a row per highest level field we'd be requiring reentry of lots of data.
Thanks,
Miriam

 

 

 _/_/  Peace Software International     Email: miriam.walker at peace.com

_/     Miriam Walker                           Phone: +64-9-373-0400 x 5357
       Senior Research Analyst              Fax  : +64-9-373-0401



 
 _/_/  Peace Software International     Email: miriam.walker at peace.com
_/     Miriam Walker                           Phone: +64-9-373-0400 x 5357
       Senior Research Analyst              Fax  : +64-9-373-0401