Hi, (this is version 2017 R3)

I have data from 4 or 5 different database tables that I need to display as a single unit in the user interface (and allow for datawindow updating).

It's a bit painful and messy, but I would like it to feel seemless as they tab through the fields. This means the tabbing has to change the focus from one column to another (handled fine by tab order within the datawindow), but it also has to skip out of that regular tabbing and change focus to a different datawindow control... it would have to do this a few times to work.

Here (see attached Personal_Info.PNG) is an example where the dob, gender, married and referred by are in one datawindow A (and table), and overlaid on top is another datawindow B (and table) with next of kin and family dr.

So pressing tab from the married field should move the focus into the next of kin (overriding it's default of moving to the referred by field). And tabbing from the family dr field should move focus to the referred by field.

In the keydown event of A:

STRING sl_current_column
LONG ll_return

ll_return = 0

IF key = KeyTab! AND keyflags = 1 THEN
    bi_tab = FALSE
    bi_shift_tab = TRUE
ELSEIF key = KeyTab! THEN
    bi_tab = TRUE
    bi_shift_tab = FALSE
ELSE
    bi_tab = FALSE
    bi_shift_tab = FALSE
END IF

sl_current_column = This.GetColumnName()

CHOOSE CASE sl_current_column

     CASE 'married'
         IF bi_tab THEN
             tab_main.tp_base.dw_next_of_kin.SetFocus()
             ll_return = 1
         END IF

    CASE 'referral_by'
         IF bi_shift_tab THEN
             tab_main.tp_base.dw_base.SetFocus()
             ll_return = 1
         END IF
END CHOOSE

bi_tab = FALSE
bi_shift_tab = FALSE

RETURN ll_return

This kind of works... I can see the focus change to the field I want, but then it changes to a different datawindow altogether. Almost like what would happen if you tabbed through a datawindow's fields, the focus would move to the next control on the window.

It's like the tab event was captured by something else that was listening and moved it along even though I've tried to stop it by returning 1 in the keydown event. I've tried adding keydown/keyup/key event listeners to the other objects on the window (and the window itself) but none of them fire after the keydown event returns 1.

I'd like to see if anyone else has had success with this kind of thing before I throw it out.

Another option I'm considering is putting all fields from all tables in one datawindow and changing the updateable fields at runtime during the save, to manually save across all tables.