Trying to get a "big picture" solution here...

[RadarBob]

This thread is in the general web forum but definitely has elements of ASP. Insightful comments are appreciated.

http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5254

[allida77]

Well since no one has replied...

Basic Design:
I am not 100% clear on what you are doing but I use pop up windows a lot when doing small rs functions(copy, edit fields, move rows), to me it is easier to the user to have a simple pop-up than going to a new screen edtiting then coming back to the initial screen. I am with you on not writing out unnecessary code.
You can set form to submit to itself and in ASP if Request.Form("hdnStep") = "Step2" then show this part of the form.

The HTML element:
I use hidden fields pretty frequently using forms and asp. I would build a js object stick it into a hidden field and pass it to the server to be parsed. I am not clear on everything you wrote here.

Server Side:
I have seen your posts before on "multi-value field of the Request.Form into the database" and see you have had not luck. I would recommend working with this because it makes life a lot easier when you start working with collections. It is probaly just as effecient though to build the sql and use command. I have never timed this but it is not much of a time difference IMO, it is just preference.

[RadarBob]

Let me try to restate the problem:

Imagine an HTML data entry form. Now imagine a part of that form that repeats. This repeating sub-set is not a single field, like a <select>. It's a group of fields. The user needs to be able to fill out the form along with any number ( zero to many) of this sub-set. It's a classic 1:many data relationship.

From my readings of various ASP books - the complete lack of material on the subject, you'd think this has never even been thought of before!! My cynical side says the authors don't want to tell us the crippling limitations of HTML/ASP/ADO in handling fundamental data structure/relationships - stuff that real DBMS tools have been doing for decades!!

Anyway, My concept, so far, has all the data on one page. For this sub-set, I don't know how many "records" the user will enter. My business rules don't limit. So the user may enter none, he may enter ten. I don't envision the "main" data entry page initialized with 30 empty rows for the user to enter sub-set data. That's ugly, unelegant, clumsy, poor design. So I'm thinking use a separate page/window to enter data. When the user "saves" this child window, the data is transfered to the "main" page.

My quandry is how to implement this sub-set on the main page. The user needs to see the information and the computer needs to differentiate separate records (client and server) so they can be stuffed into the database.