WinStudio is a database-oriented user interface. To get or submit information, you generally access one or more tables in databases. The application uses fields and other components on forms to present collections of data records.
You must understand these basic concepts:
A form is the window through which you interact with information in a database. Looking up information, entering new information, and generating reports are typical interactions. Each form is devoted to a business task or to several related tasks.
For example, you can use an Attendance form to record and track employee work attendance records. You can use this form, then, to view attendance information about a particular employee, to get an idea of how many employees are using sick time, how many employees were absent on a given day, and so on. This form would display and allow you to work with all data related to employee attendance.
For more information about forms, see Working with Forms.
A field is an area on a form that displays a piece of information from the database. If the data already exists and can be viewed, the field typically displays the information. Fields also allow you to enter and save new data. Forms usually have a number of fields that all display related pieces of information.
Our example Attendance form has fields that each display a different but related piece of information:
For more information about fields, see Working with Fields.
A record is a group of related pieces of data or information. Each piece of information displays in a separate field on the form. Taken together, they constitute one record.
In our example, the fields together display one record that contains information about a paid absence of an employee: the employee's name and ID number, the date and reason for the absence, and so on.
A form can display multiple records in a grid, and you can select the record you want to see from that grid.
For more information about records, see Working with Records.
A group of related records is a collection.
Our example Absence collection is displayed, as with many forms, on the grid (left) side of the form.
With many forms, it is possible to view collections of all available records. But, in practice, you typically work with a specific subset of records in a particular collection. Using our Attendance form, you can query for attendance records over a period of time. For instance, you might want to review all attendance records for the past month. Or you might want to review the attendance records of a single employee for the past year. In these cases, you can perform a query that will retrieve as a collection only those records you want to view.
For more information about collections, see Working with Collections.
Most forms display only one collection. Some forms, however, display two collections, a primary collection and a subcollection. A subcollection is associated with a particular record in the primary collection. For example, if each record in the primary collection represents a work group at your company, the subcollection records associated with each work group record might include the employees who are members of that group.
When working with forms that present primary collections and subcollections, keep in mind that:
As an example, the Users form contains both a primary collection and a subcollection. In this case, the subcollection (on the Groups tab) shows the group memberships for the selected user record in the primary collection. The group membership subcollection is different for each user record.