>I understand your reason for dropping out the combo idea. Then we might perhaps need two forms. One to the information of an existing customer, and the other one to one customer. This one might just be another bizobjmaintform, with parameters that they could fill in to make their search. >If they find nothing, they just add a new record. This form should return the customerId (or a blank). In this implementation, the customerobj has an indepedant life, no special relationship. The only check needed in some sort of BeforeSave() hook is to be sure the customerid is not left empty. >
OK, that was the other alternative I had thought about. I'd like to make sure that they always checked to make sure the customer didn't already exist before adding a new one. I think your suggestion might be the easiest way to go, w/o having to worry about when things should be validated. Something along the lines of: disable the customer fields, highlight the "Find" button. They search for the customer, if it's found return that info to the calling form and write enable the fields, if it isn't give them some way of adding a new record (and return that info).
I'll still need to add some sort of validation/prompt to check to see if they've made changes to the name/address in the "main" screen if they'd like to update the original customer record (similar to a program like Quicken/Quickbooks). They'd have fits if I forced them to always go into another screen to do that.
Thanks for the suggestions. This sounds like a workable solution.
