ncxplants

Sorry, had a braincramp. I meant PHP, not Javascript.

Thanks much for the quick reply. I am kind of an Excel nut, but . . . Actually, I have a separate table for each category (topic) and then a table with the questions that is joined to the answer table . The answer table for each topic has a row for each user and a column (TINYINT, most answers are rating things 1 to 10)) for each answer (100+). I use one big table for the answers for each topic because I use Dreamweaver CS4 to build a series of tabbed panels for each topic. Each subtopic will have a tab in the tabbed panels with a table containing a column for questions, column for their answer (mostly radio buttons), and a column for which group they want to compare their answers to (30-40 year old, white, married, females of medium income). I query the answe table to get a resultset (each topic), (using GROUP BY by age, gender, ethnicity, etc.), using WITH ROLLUP options that give a lot of neat comparisons. I can do this with one select for the user and one for the group they want to compare themselves with in the resultset. If I have a 100+ answers spread across the tabbed panels tables, all from one row, assigned to an associative array to fill the tables in the tabbed panel. I need to update the answer table. Is a JavaScript routine to build the SQL Update SET parameters of fieldnames=values still my best bet? I probably need to hire a real programmer.

Thanks for the reply. Not to sound condescending at all but I spent my entire career on SQL (founder, CEO and lead architect of a successful data warehousing company that went public before I retired). I'll debate the merits of the design anytime. My problem is that I'm retired and am used to having a few hundred programmers implementing stuff. I never heard of PHP until a few months ago. I did spend time visiting with Gates at the Windows 3 announcement in NYC many years ago, and I was old then. I am going to have a lot of implementation questions because I haven't coded in years (PL/MI on an IBM AS/400 - ODBC stuff). So am I right that someone built this kind of neat PHP function that takes a SQL table, and puts a row of data of data into a neat associative array and then give's you no way to update the row using that same array. I would have fired him and I know Bill would have chewed him out and then fired him. I am serious about the questions and would really appreciate your best answer. Thanks.

I'm designing a web application where I'm asking users a lot of questions (frequently 100) in many different categories. Each category will be a separate table with each column representing an answer. Since SQL doesn't support arrays for column names, I'm probably stuck with naming the columns a1, a2, a3, . . an. for answers (along with some indexing, etc. keys) in the table. I will be querying on answers in the columns, so that is somewhat acceptable. PHP has mysql_fetch_array associative naming which should work nicely. However, when updating the row of answers, mySQL update $query = "UPDATE table SET (How do stick the updated array I've been working with in the user dialog as this Set parameter)? Do I have to build them with strings? Is there a nice PHP function? I have gone through many tutorials, books, etc. without luck. This seems so basic and I feel so foolish. P.S. Does the associative array and corresponding numeric array, both refer to the same value so I can use the meaningful column names when they're meaningful, and the numbers when I want to loop through them? I can't experiment quite yet, but this is an important design consideration. Thanks.