cheesegrits
Support Gopher
I think the key phrase there is:
We obviously can't anticipate what people will want to do with the data outside of Fabrik, so we just build our table and element data handling in the way that makes the best sense within standard database management practices.
If you absolutely have to have the CONCAT'ed label stored in the table for other applications, which for whatever reason don't understand how to join the other table based on a unique foreign key, you could work round that with something like a calc element or a form PHP plugin, which derives your CONCAT'ed label whenever the form is submitted, and stores it in a hidden field. Although that's still going to lead to data mismatches when (for instance) someone gets married and changes their name, or whatever.
My only other comment with regards to your suggestion of always applying the join's WHERE clause ...
When both of the authors of Fabrik, with well over a decade of combined development time on the product, say they foresee big problems with trying to do this ... well ... you may not be able to see how this would create a problem, but we do.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words, and as you've no doubt found, we'll help in with your Fabrik usage in whatever ways we feel we can reasonably do so. But there are some "features" which just can't happen.
-- hugh
We obviously can't anticipate what people will want to do with the data outside of Fabrik, so we just build our table and element data handling in the way that makes the best sense within standard database management practices.
If you absolutely have to have the CONCAT'ed label stored in the table for other applications, which for whatever reason don't understand how to join the other table based on a unique foreign key, you could work round that with something like a calc element or a form PHP plugin, which derives your CONCAT'ed label whenever the form is submitted, and stores it in a hidden field. Although that's still going to lead to data mismatches when (for instance) someone gets married and changes their name, or whatever.
My only other comment with regards to your suggestion of always applying the join's WHERE clause ...
When both of the authors of Fabrik, with well over a decade of combined development time on the product, say they foresee big problems with trying to do this ... well ... you may not be able to see how this would create a problem, but we do.
Anyway, thanks for the kind words, and as you've no doubt found, we'll help in with your Fabrik usage in whatever ways we feel we can reasonably do so. But there are some "features" which just can't happen.
-- hugh