Link to home
Start Free TrialLog in
Avatar of trims30
trims30

asked on

Software Design

Am faced with a challenge today and would like some input before I start my project.

Need to create a Desktop Purchase Order program - using vb.net/Winforms / SqlServer.

I am able to handle the programming but have one point of concern in the User Interface Design and would like some input from others who have probably gone through this before.

Here's my concern...
Over a period of time there could be 1000's of purchase orders.  I would like to display all orders on a Grid but my concern is the amount of data going across the network to populate the grid using SQL statement like :

SELECT PoNum, VendorName, OrderDate,Amount FROM Orders.

Open in new window


This will bring every row from the Database across the network to the Workstation and will take time to populate the Grid.

I could use database paging as I have done before in ASP.Net but that limits the user somewhat with regard to ease of finding and viewing previous orders.

How do companies with huge databases (Banks, Airlines, Etc) browse their customer database?  I'm open to any suggestions here.

Thanks,

LB
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Member_2_861731
Member_2_861731
Flag of Canada image

Link to home
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
Start Free Trial
Like lionking stated, presenting the user with a subset would be your best option. No one needs to see thousands of rows of data at one time. If you force them to sift through everything each time they open the app, they are wasting too much time with old data.

A smaller subset of relevant data (previous month / current month) would give your users a snapshot of what they may need and the ability to search for specific criteria allows them the flexibility to find exactly what they need.
Avatar of trims30
trims30

ASKER

Can do for Active or Completed Work Orders/Purchase Orders and within current time period. My concern also goes to Inventory where there are 1000's of Stock Numbers - how do I make subsets of that? By Alphabet  ie; descriptions starting with A, or B or C?
For inventory it's quite difficult to establish an "initial query".
You could do the top 50 products that have more sales, or products starting with letter "A", like you said.