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Hey Derek,
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I was afraid that was an open, subjective question there.  But your response has given me some confidence in what I have going so far.  The project I have is working fine, but noticed those last two (unaddressed) items you mentioned.  This may have started my second guessing.
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Thanks a lot for giving those different examples too!
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Going back to this secondary project example, I added the month/year filter similar to the one from my other post.  I cannot get the dateTimePicker to start auto-checked in this project.
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I have set and unset both checked and default checked properties, but this doesn't seem to do anything.  So, I tried writing it in a script to check it.  When I do this, the box is checked, but the tablegrid isn't filtered. (it is followed with searchButton.click too)
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Not sure what's causing this, because it's working fine in my other main project so this is kinda minor...
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But it leads to another (more important) request I have: while the dateTime filter is checked, when a new record is created, it removes the filter and shows all the records (even though it is still checked).
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How can I keep the filter in place and prevent this from happening?  You can observe it with this project.

Okay, so I made some minor changes to get the results I had in mind:
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So since the date is always required, I hide the checkbox for that field.  I created a "dummy" hidden time field to always store the time.  And I wanted to make use of the checkbox (for the user interface) on the visible time field because it is optional.
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This is what I came up with, and it seems to be working okay.  But I would appreciate any feedback from anyone that will have a look at it.

Again derek, I appreciate that example with the tableGrid conditions and testing.  Very helpful for me.  I haven't done any of that yet.

I have some arbitrary questions (for anyone that has posted in this thread) about some of your settings (in the IDE I guess).  When some of you offer solutions:
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1. I notice the tabstops or spacing is set to two.  The default in MVD is like four, so I'm just curious if you folks use a different editor for the scripts?  Because I see no way to change this in MVD.  (Unless you don't use the tab key )
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2. Also (particularly with derek) the Grid size seems to be different.  Mine is set to eight which is the installation default.  I notice because without manually changing position values, my controls don't ever line up with the ones from your projects.
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These are kinda random questions, but I have always been curious.

Hi folks,
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Welcome back derek, and thanks for chiming in on this.  No, I haven't moved on as I'm still weighing out the different options and how to approach it.

brian
Thanks for your last suggestions.  I was able to get it working in a different project, so I'm pretty sure it's a timing issue with when the format is being applied in the project with the error.
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I do have another question now though... but let me add an extra detail to this:
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There will always be a date, but the time is optional.  I noticed in the default tableGrid formatting of the DateTime field that when the time is midnight 00:00:00, it doesn't even display the time (and I prefer this).  However, when that grid format is applied, the time 00:00 is always displayed.  Is there a way to ignore the time when it's midnight like in the default?
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In my attached example, I am using a button instead of the OnChange event to demonstrate my question above.

derek
I have a few questions about your project, if you will.
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1. Also in my attached example, I used your approach without the event.cfmonth but instead event.eDate.  Do you see where this could cause a problem?  Is the cfmonth necessary?
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2. In your example, you use copy(frmmain.dtpfilter.sqldate,2,7).  I was trying to figure out why you start with 2.  I tested 0 and 1, and in both cases it included the first double quote ".  Are 0 and 1 returning the same thing in this case?  Would you explain this further, please?
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Also thanks for the suggestion for leaving the checkbox on the filter date.  I hadn't thought about that.

general questions
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It's not necessary to deal with seconds or mseconds with the time field.  On the frmDetail when I use format HH:mm, it indeed hides the seconds and the AM/PM, but it's still recording the seconds and possibly the mseconds.  I need those to always be 00 in any case.  That way- if there is a way to do the formatting described above, the time will be hidden in the tableGrid.
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Because the time is optional, on the frmDetail the dtpTime is linked to the dtpDate, so when the Time is unchecked the date is also not saved.  I have some ideas on how keep the time excluded (maybe by using other hidden controls and scripts).  Is there a better way of doing this?
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This is the issue I was having in my last post where I was talking about using two separate fields again.  I don't particularly like this idea.  So I'm still experimenting for now.

[edit] forgot to add the project [/edit]

brian,
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Thank you for the explanations.  I will try to learn a bit more about triggers now, because it sounds like they would be useful in the next step of this project.  This is where my knowledge with SQL ends.  I have heard about triggers, but I've never used them before... so the journey beings.
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Thanks also for the tip about saving them outside of MVD.  I'm sure this will be very useful once I learn more about them.
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As far as the calculated fields, I'm sure it depends on the situation (as always).  But I was just curious if you had some determining factors that made you go one way or the other on when to use them.
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sparrow,
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I can't explain how helpful it is for me to finally get this formatting issue resolved in FastReport- I was beginning to think it wasn't possible.  I appreciate the comparison between the two ways of doing this in your example too.  I'm beginning to understand this a bit more now, and I really appreciate both of your contributions!
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Regarding your last post, I don't follow where that would go.  The TNxNumberColumn makes me think of a report...  But then again, the complete line seems like the syntax inside a script procedure call... I can't decide for sure tho.
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Thanks once again guys!

Thanks again to both of you for contributing your hints and techniques here!
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It's a little too late to mention this now, but for this project it wasn't necessary for the AM/PM part.  But you both have thoroughly covered that in detail, and I will use it for the future- I'm sure.

brian,
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I am curious about this...  Will you elaborate on cases when you would and would not use calculated fields?  (just in general)
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Also in your example, you saved-it-in-database, but I'm not sure that I am familiar with what you meant by "use trigger".  Will you describe what this is too, please?
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And thanks for pointing out that 0.99999 detail, because I started using this technique in some of my other projects now
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No worries about the reporting, I will adjust it too.  Who prints anything these days, right?

sparrow,
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Your code snippet for the red field text in FastReport is precisely what I was looking for, Thank you!  But this also leads me to believe (and answers my very last question about the DisplayFormat property in FastReport) that it doesn't work. Perhaps this is the proper way to accomplish this with MVD and its included version of FastReport.
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Going back to your other suggestion:
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[edit]
Excuse me, I follow what you were saying now... you have to make that call in the report prior to changing those properties AND THEN it will display that format...
[/edit]
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Your last CASE WHEN example is much cleaner than the one I was using.  The modulus operator didn’t come to mind, nor did searching for a generic solution to that.  I get tunnel vision sometimes, so I just resorted to using that similar structure for the SQL line to convert the month numbers into words.

Many many thanks guys, I’m still learning the MVD ways, and this has helped a bunch!

Yeah I didn't mean to complicate your question, so probably best to disregard my post.
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I started out with two name fields in a project I was working on.  Then I needed to add an optional name and so this was how I handled it.  There is probably an even better way to do it, but I wanted to share what I came up with for that.  You know... in case you might add a 3rd name sometime. 

I knew it was a simple answer.  I just couldn't find it (didn't know what to search for, or where to look).
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Still learning the datatypes.  I stumbled across the SQLDateTimeToDateTime() today.  It may have also worked, but I haven't tested it.
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I know about the f(x) reference in MVD.  When I choose the Types category, everything begins with T and I get overwhelmed there.  I guess I need to start referring to the delphi page now because I just noticed that type is listed there (more clearly for me).
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Many thanks sir!

Hi sparrow,
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Thank you for reviewing this issue and I appreciate your patience answer this question (again).  It seems that it's coming from the same error in the beginning: with the null values which are missing from the table during input.
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It is very much appreciated!  This makes sense, and I will pay more attention to this in future projects now.
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As for your second post, I answered another user here (perhaps too late) that was asking how to do that very thing.  At the time, I wasn't sure... but now I am running into the same problem.  LOL  Apparently they were able to identify this at an earlier stage than myself.
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Hats off to you.

Here lately, I have been experimenting with FastReport a bit further (trying to identify the original problem I was having).  I am convinced that it is a datatype issue.
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I believe that the data is being stored improperly (maybe somewhere in my code), and not necessarily with the SQL sent to FastReport.  In another quick ad-hoc project, it calculates the real values correctly using SUM().  So this far, I have gotten two different results with real values:

1. SUM() produces a concatination of the real values (it does this with strings).

2. SUM() produces a total of the real values (as expected).

In both cases, the datatypes are Real in both MVD and SQlite, and the `DisplayFormat` property in FastReport has no effect either.
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I made sure (to my best ability) that the datatypes are correct in the code.  Even though MVD will not allow improper datatypes to be stored within the software, but I'm not sure how to verify it in SQLite.  FastReport seems to be treating the real values as strings with concat or something.
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In this screenshot:

• The left group - (these values have been clipped) but the integers in the left column are being calculated correctly with SUM(), but the real values in the right column are being concatinated.

• The right group - the real values also being calculated correctly from the ad-hoc project.

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This project is a bit large to just scrap and start over, so I'm trying to troubleshoot the problem at this point.
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Although the IFNULL solution provided by sparrow seems to be working, I would rather identify the problem causing this concatination behavior in my first example if possible...