Connect with Tall/Thin Table

Is it possible to configure connect to record responses into multiple rows where each field name is used as a key? For example, instead of this:

Equip ID.....Description...........Status
1001............Cordless Drill........Available
1002............Cordless Driver.....Available
1003............Table Saw..............Unavilable

I'd like to do this:

Key...................Value

Equip ID...........1001
Description......Cordless Drill
Status...............Available
Equip ID...........1002
Description......Cordless Driver
Status...............Available
Equip ID...........1003
Description......Table Saw
Status................Unavailable
 

Joseph Kraebel

Administrator
Staff member
Hi Alexander,

If I understand this correctly, you would like to use a 2 field table where the first field is the field data being collected and the 2nd the actual data? Not sure how the field name can be the key field though as that seems like it would be a key violation on unique data.

Maybe if you can elaborate on why you are looking to do it this way we can offer some suggestions.
 
Hi Joseph,

Thank you for your response. The issue we are having is that the mobile client session may change periodically to collect different types of data based on our company's needs. Our non-technical users would like to be able to change their sessions without having to change our database table or remap fields using the Connect software.

I apologize for the confusion, I'm new to the world of databases. Our table would more likely have 3 columns, a Response ID, a Field Name (which I called key) and a Field Value; they don't necessarily need to be unique. If our session has five questions we want to add 5 records per response, where the Response ID is the same for each, the Field Name varies based on the questions being answered, and the Field Value is what text was entered on the mobile client. Then if our team adds a 6th question to the session, we add 6 records for each response.

Hope this makes sense.
 

Joseph Kraebel

Administrator
Staff member
Hi Alexander,

You can probably just have a 3 field session where field 1 equip ID, field 2 can be the user text entry or a drop down of the field they are collection and field 3 being the actual value for that field. This would give you data that looks like the below:

Equip ID.....Attribute....Value
1001.............Make..........Dewalt
1001.............Model.........20V Cordless
1001.............Status..........Available

Not sure if this is what you were looking to do.
 
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