Re: upgrades and database integrity.

[Luke <..hidden..>]

On Mon, 11 Jan 2010, Stroller wrote:

> Ok, using the workflow I described before, the select box is unticked  
> by default.

Right.  Enter a customer, hit update.

One or more invoices appear, with their boxes unticked.

> I guess I started out with LedgerSMB (or SQL-Ledger) by choosing a  
> customer from the drop-down, then update and then filling out the  
> amounts and clicking post.

I started that way as well, and right away ran into such weirdness, that I 
looked it up in the SQL-Ledger manual which I had at the time, and found 
out what the checkboxes would do.

 > Does that not seem logical?

It does, until you wonder "why are these checkboxes here?  What are they 
for?"

> It would never have occurred to me that LedgerSMB would fill out the  
> amounts for me if I choose a customer from the drop-down, then update,  
> then tick select, then press update again. Why would I expect it to do  
> that? It took your comments above for me to experiment & discover this  
> behaviour.

The reason it does this, and for that matter has the select boxes and 
lineitem amount fields, is so you can check, say, 2 out of three invoices.  
On update, the individual invoices will show their full amounts in their 
lineitem fields, and the master amount field will show the total.  If the 
check pays all of one invoice, but only some of another, you can then 
alter the amount on which ever of the invoices to reflect that it is only 
being partially paid.

Note, that if you do that, I do not know if you have to blank the total 
amount field, or whether the program overwrites it on its own--haven't 
done a partial payment in years.

Regardless, that's why the checkboxes, and why the multiple amount fields.

The general rule is, at least for me, that if clicking update causes 
strange or unanticipatable results, I'm doing something in a way that the 
programmers didn't intend (I.E. probably wrong), and there must be some 
other way.

 Now, maybe you can advise me on employee 
expenses?:)  Still having problems with that for one reason or another.

Luke