|  | Posted by Bob Stearns on 08/27/05 00:03 
pk wrote:> Here is my problem.  I want to make a webapp that will basically take
 > the work out of finding what tool works for what situation.  There are
 > 5 factors that go into tool selection.  1)Material Group, 2)Insert
 > Radius, 3)Insert Type and Size, and 2 others that I can't remember
 > off-hand.  There are probably about 1000 different scenarios that I
 > have to code for..(there are several blank table cells and it's not
 > setup as you might imagine, there is a lot of overlapping), and I
 > desperately want to avoid making a gigantic conditional statement.  I'm
 > afraid that I really have to provide a picture of what I'm doing here,
 > so I will do that.  Here is the link.
 > http://www.bigkaiser.com/temp/weirdtable.jpg  You only see 3 of the 5
 > factors on this page, and the other 2 have to do with whether this
 > table or one of many other tables (not pictured) will be used.
 >
 > So, now that I've confused everyone.  That's my table.  What's a good
 > way to go about programming that sucker in so that people don't have to
 > do all the "work" involved to figure out what tools they need.  They
 > should just be able to choose selections from 5 dropdown boxes and get
 > one tool back.  A tool is something like "10.655.600".
 >
 > Thanks for whomever tries to come up with a solution to this poorly
 > explained problem. :)
 >
 > -pk
 >
 If you have one handy, my solution would be to us a small database with
 the 5 factors as the key attributes and the tool id as the sixth
 attribute. If that is not possible, a really large multidimensional
 array would do it, but performance issues need to be addressed. Perhaps
 a 2 dimensional table which gives the name of the appropriate include
 module which instantiates a 3 dimensional array which yields tool_id?
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