Things just plain...aren't working

Things just plain...aren't working

Hi -

So, I love Zoho Creator SO MUCH, but I think it may just be the single biggest headache I've had in...yeah, several years at least.

The problems are too complex to explain in detail here (I've also sent an email to support@zohocreator.com, as well as shared the app, MainDB under the 'stjcadmin' account), but in general, I don't even get error messages anymore. When I do, they're rarely more complex than "null". My forms are hanging on SHOW scripts, not even the more complex scripts (though I'm fairly sure that those scripts are what's causing this). Most frustratingly, the 'rules' of Deluge seem not to apply consistently across circumstances. This is concrete, so I'll put the example out here. All inside one application, for one of my forms (on one tab), the following code generates a field of type DECIMAL:


form DATA_Sens
{
...
TTJAw
(
type = number
defaultvalue = 0
width = 5
maxchar = 5
decimalplace = 1
)













In another of the forms (one with a number of complex scripts), the following code generates a field of type BIGINT:


form CongressLobbyReport
{
...
TotTJAw
(
type = number
defaultvalue = 0
width = 5
maxchar = 5
decimalplace = 1
)













I somehow suspect it's not the name of the field that's doing it. They're both supposed to be DECIMAL, and I need them to be in order to dynamically calculate averages that round to the nearest tenth (this is the only way I've conceived of to do it - make sure I divide one 1-digit decimal by another, because dividing with BIGINTS just rounds to the nearest integer, even if the field capturing the data is of type DECIMAL) The only other difference between these two forms is that DATA_Sens form, which is the one behaving properly, has a fair chunk of data in it, whereas the CongressLobbyReport form does not.

Even more worrisome, however, is that when I created a NEW form that contained exactly the same fields as the old CongressLobbyReport form but without any of the scripts (change OR submit OR success OR load), not only did it still identify the TotTJAw field as a BIGINT, but now the damn thing won't even let me actually enter data into it. It just hangs, with the endlessly spinning 'Circle of Zoho', on every single script that I've (subsequently) put in. And those scripts are all carbon-copies of the scripts from the original CongressLobbyReport form, which is STILL working fine in those particular areas.

Honestly, the really frustrating thing in all this is that I've put at least 50 hours into the CongressLobbyReport form, and last night at about 4am finally got it to exactly where I need it to be with the SOLE exception of this problem with averaging that I just described. So what did I try to do? Stupidly, I guess, try to change the type of certain already-existing fields from BIGINT to DECIMAL. But field-type-changing seems to just drive Creator apeshit, and also seems to be the primary factor in driving a 'split' between what I see in the GUI/Deluge and the underlying code, which I assume is (honestly) a beautiful amalgam of SQL and a whole lot of other things. I suppose I should've known better, though...I'd just spent ten hours cleaning up after I initiated another such 'split' by apparently making the mistake of writing 'too much' straight into the script and trying to save it all at once - the editor doesn't seem to like trying to create new fields in a form when processes are simultaneously being added for those same fields in 'on success' or 'on submit' scripts. The worst part is, I KNOW that the code is empirically correct, barring some typos here and there, because the way I finally WON that 10-hour battle was to gradually work backwards, deleting the new fields I had added in a single big update one by one until I was back before the 'split'. From there, the code I had worked out worked perfectly...but because I hadn't entered it in the proper order before, it became a mess.

So that's half rant, half obvious problem, and I'm sorry for the first half. The bottom line is that, as I said, my forms are now hanging on, of all things, SHOW SCRIPTS, and I'm about ready to throw in the towel. In fact, I think the only reason I haven't is that I've been ignoring so many of the other, really important things I need to do to try to get this done (for it, too, is really important to my organization) that I'm just too stubborn to think that the overall 300+ hours I've put into it should actually have a concrete RESULT.

So, ye wizards of Zoho...any help you can provide would be tremendous. In response to one of my previous posts, you asked for my contact information; that's included in the email I've sent, and I'd be more than happy to talk with you about all this through those means rather than laboriously typing it all out.

Thanks,
Sam

PS - While things may not be working...at least they're MUCH FASTER! The grid makes SUCH A DIFFERENCE! WOOOHOOO! (and, actually, I've noticed that many of these ambiguity problems do seem to have