Don,

Got your screen shot, and tried to reply to your email address, but your server's blocking the IP address of my client where I'm located for today -- no biggie, I'll send you my response later tonight from another location. Just wanted to let you know...

Evan

>Thanks Evan -
>You are pretty close. Each year has 10 textboxes, 5 showing the amount and 5 showing the source of the amount. Times 10 years that makes 50 textboxes. So the form shows a 10 year span of what might be a 20 year continuium. The spinner allows the form to slide forward and backward over that continuium. There is a routine that changes the control source of each textbox to a different field as the spinner is clicked.
>
>I'd be glad to post an image but don't know how to do that on UT.
>
>btw - I have tried the mouseover to change the grid size and you are right, it's not very satisfying.
>
>>Hi Don,
>>
>>I'm a bit confused.
>>
>>The way I read your description: your main form is showing ten years of budget forecasts at a given instant -- and *each* year has five textboxes for it (thereby showing *fifty* textboxes at once) and the user can move, using the spinner, through any number of ten-year wide time periods, thereby altering the values in each of the textboxes.
>>
>>Somehow, I don't think that's what you meant -- but that's what I'm picturing in my twisted mind.
>>
>>If that *is* the case, then you might think about replacing each year's five textboxes with a *listbox* and a small button beside it (or above it) which would "show the detail" by expanding/contracting the listbox size to show all the individual rows. You could even do this with a grid and expand its size when the mouse moved over the header bar, but that could get very annoying very quickly :).
>>
>>Of course, this is assuming I'm visualizing the interface correctly, which is highly doubtful :)))). Could you possibly post a picture of the interface here? That might help those of us (like me) who are imaginarily challenged (bg)...
>>
>>Evan
>>
>>
>>>I have an old application that I would like to redesign. The reason I would like to redesign it is because one of the principle tables was poorly thought out.It is a project budgeting application containing multiyear budget entries for a multitude of projects. The parent table contains basic project info including description, project manager, location, etc. The budget or financial table is a child table that connects on a one to one relationship. The there are 10 fields in this child table for each year of the budget forecast. Within these 10 fields there is the opportunity for 5 budget amounts and corresponding fund sources. I'm sure you can see the limitatins with this arrangement very quickly. Since there is a limit on the number of fields in a table, the number of years that can be forecasted is also limited. Also, what if the project requires more than 5 fundsources in any given year? I'm stuck there too. (I might mention here that I inherited the table design.)
>>>
>>>I think a better approach here would be for the child table to be a one to many relationship with a structure like this:
>>>ProjectID
>>>Amount
>>>Source
>>>Year
>>>This would allow an unlimited number of years and an unlimited number of sources per year. Another option would be to separate tables for each year and keep them on a one to one relationship. Each table could have an expanded number of fields to provide for more fundsources in the year. This idea doesn't follow the normalization rules very well and seems poor to me. Although I could probably make it work.
>>>
>>>My problem is in the display of the data. My mainform presents a page whereupon we show ten years worth of the budget forecast. A spinner allows the user to move the "window" forward and backward in time if the extents of the forecast exceed what can be shown at one time. Each year of the forecast is presented discretely in a group of textboxes tied to the fields in the table. My users really like this presentation because it makes it easy to see how the funding progresses from year to year. If I choose the first option for redesign of the child table, the only presentation I can think of is in a series of 10 little grids. The number of records in each would vary depending on how many budget items were existant for the year. This messes up the "clean" display and the scroll bars consume space I don't have to give.
>>>
>>>So I'm asking for any thoughts, comments, or suggestions.
>>>Thanks