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?

[Back to original message]