design help

[dpk136]

I am trying to improve on a system. It is a web system in C# using SQL Server 2000. I can do anything to the database that I want. The problem is that when a user enters a problem that occurs we would like them to enter Broken Valve in Adj/Noun form. Sometimes users put Valve Broke or brke vlve, etc. does anyone have any idea what the best way to solve this problem, either in the DB or in code.

thanks

David Kuhn
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http://www.davidpkuhn.com

 

[golcarlad]

Can you use combo boxes with values pre set for the user to select from? I guess you probably thought of that though...

 

[stevexff]

Good suggestion. categorising the problem with a few dropdown boxes fed from foreign-key tables is a good way to go, especially as you can make the contents of box #2 dependent on what was selected in box #1. This makes it much easier to categorise the kind of faults you want to log (reporting on free-format text fields is never easy...)

As long as you include an 'other' category, with the facility to have some free format text to cater for those problems you didn't foresee, you should be OK. Then you can list out any 'other' rows that get recorded at your leisure, and update your category tables for the future...

Steve

[small]"Every program can be reduced by one instruction, and every program has at least one bug. Therefore, any program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." (Object:erlDesignPatterns)[/small]