Newbie Questions

Re: Repeating Table that queries SQL, in a Repeating Section

Rae — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 13:19:24 GMT

Thank you so much for your quick reply. The spec for the project changed suddenly, but I may still be able to use this. It's nice to know that the little blue circles don't instantly mean the form can't work, either - I tried just using it and it looked like it worked; the conditional formatting caused other issues but that's a different problem, I think.

Re: Repeating Table that queries SQL, in a Repeating Section

Jimmy — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 14:09:53 GMT

Sometimes those blue circles can be safely ignored and I think this is one of those cases. Please proceed with trying to implement this functionality and it might work out.

Here's a recent forum post about a similar question. That thread has both repeating groups in the main data source, but I think it will still work with your setup:
Linking Two Repeating groups....

Repeating Table that queries SQL, in a Repeating Section

Rae — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 13:38:53 GMT

I swear, every time I try to do something interesting in InfoPath, I run into a wall. Either the room is really small or I'm walking around blind (or both).

The scenario is this, in its simplest form:

In InfoPath 2003, I have a form with a repeating section. In the repeating section, I want to put a repeating table that gets data from a SQL database. I intend to use conditional formatting to "filter" the results (as normal filtering on repeating data from a secondary source is evidently impossible), so each instance of the repeating section will have different data showing in the nested repeating table. The reference value for the "filter" will be taken from user input in a text box in the current instance of the repeating section. I am aware of the "current()" function and I'm thinking I'll be able to use it when it comes time to actually conditionally format the data.

My first real hurdle in this, however, is that when I create the repeating table bound to the secondary data source, I get the little blue circle with the 'i' in it that says the table cannot repeat here, and that it needs to be moved out of the repeating section (which won't work for me) or the group needs to be moved (and that doesn't appear to work in InfoPath). I'm using a binding because it seems I can't merely populate the table the way I can with, say, a dropdown menu.

I've Googled and searched and I'm out of ideas. Suggestions, links to helpful sources, or anything else useful would be amazing. If there's a solution, a workaround, or another way to accomplish what I'm trying to do, I'd love to be steered in the right direction. Thanks.