I got good sleep for five full days. I thought the first day was good but the second day was even better. The last two days have been less than ideal sleep but it has not been horrible sleep. This morning when I woke up I thought it would be earlier than it was. It was only 3am. I was not fully awake but not going back to sleep so I prayed. It was a good time of prayer.
As this conversation with God was coming to an end, He went and gave me a possible solution to a problem I was working on all day yesterday. If it works then I should be near completion of this report. I thought the reports project would include some simple reports but I have only had medium to difficult reports thus far. Yesterday my brain really got a work out as I thought through the process of manipulating data.
One of the problems was interesting. I had to select the termination date from a different program but only if it exists in all crews. I thought that I found the field but as there is limited data I had to create some to determine if I was correct. Then I had to populate with more data for testing. So the possibility exists that they could be hired on multiple crews and terminated on multiple crews. It is more important to know if they are terminated on ALL crews. I ended up grouping by this field, sorting it in ascending order, and then selecting only the top record. If there is no termination date then the top record shows a null value but if the person is terminated on all crews it has a value. I am able to keep a single record which is all I need. I thought it was a great solution.
The problem I had not overcome was listing the two pay periods next to each other. I believe I can creating a running total on each deduction code but one for each pay period. Then display them in the footer of the group, reset the total, and allow the information to be populated this way. It leads to issues as new deduction codes are introduced but that should be limited. Then I have to determine if they are different and tag them. It works for the summary of the report so it should work on the group level. If so I should finish this report today given no other major issues. I believe there is only one other issue I have not addressed on this report so I guess I will just have to wait and see.
My heart is heavy for a few people even now. I think God was listening this morning as I prayed for them. Of course He is always listening.
You know how cool it is to have the privilege to pray for people? So cool!