Join on Fractional Numbers/String?

[databasedonr]

Greetings all:

I have a database tracking customers and inventory, and I've tried to add in a feature where I can meet customers needs with future inventory. Key to this process is three tables:

tblCustomer - containing my customer information
tblInventory - with inventory data including a part number
tblNeeds - a table I've created for this purpose, containing CustomerID and Part Number.

Here's the premise: when speaking with a customer, I may learn they want a product I don't currently have in inventory, or may have never had in inventory, but that I may get in the future. I do this "on demand" in the form of a report, and it works really well ... except:

I have found that several similar products from the same supplier have similar product part numbers. What I would like to do is be able to match my query on a fractional part of the part number. In all cases, the part number would be the same over the first six characters (in a text field). Any ideas how I might do this? In my current query, I use a join, but I can't do that for fractional strings....

I've attached the query I am currently using (and running a bound report from this query):

SELECT DISTINCT tblCustomer.CustID, tblCustomer.CoName, tblInventory.ProductDescription, tblInventory.ProductPartNumber, tblInventory.UnitsAvailable, tblInventory.ProductID
FROM tblInventory INNER JOIN (tblCustomer INNER JOIN tblNeeds ON tblCustomer.CustID = tblNeeds.CustomerID) ON tblInventory.ProductPartNumber = tblNeeds.PartNo
WHERE (((tblInventory.UnitsAvailable)>0));

And what I want to do is match the tblInventory.ProductPartNumber on the tblNeeds.PartNo by matching only the first six characters....

Thanks in advance,

Don

 

[Matt Greatorex]

SELECT DISTINCT tblCustomer.CustID, tblCustomer.CoName, tblInventory.ProductDescription, tblInventory.ProductPartNumber, tblInventory.UnitsAvailable, tblInventory.ProductID
FROM tblInventory INNER JOIN (tblCustomer INNER JOIN tblNeeds ON tblCustomer.CustID = tblNeeds.CustomerID) ON tblInventory.ProductPartNumber = tblNeeds.PartNo
WHERE (((tblInventory.UnitsAvailable)>0));

Don,

I think if you change

tblInventory.ProductPartNumber = tblNeeds.PartNo

to

Left(tblInventory.ProductPartNumber,6) = Left(tblNeeds.PartNo, 6)

you could be okay.

 

[databasedonr]

Thanks!

Matt,

that looks like it worked -- thank you very much! Now, I have too many results, but that's another problem and I think I can solve it!

Thanks again, that worked a treat.

Don

 

[Matt Greatorex]

Glad to be of service.