Oh, so it is as bad as I feared. The user would expect the list to be up to date every time it was accessed, but it might not be if the external list was modified but the user is offline.
@Davide, you have raised an even more frightening idea that I had not considered—the possibility a field might be modified after it had been selected and the transaction created. While you did not suggest it, some users might expect it. I suppose it would depend on each person’s definition of dynamic.
Actually reliably implementation requires multi program asynchronous access to an external data source. Within a database the multiprocessing record locking is handled by the database program. With an external storage that becomes a programmer problem.
Multiprocessor communication is one of the most complex areas of computer science plagued by race conditions, lock ups, and inability to do deterministic testing. For a Manager user it risks Manager crashing at random times, for NG software the crashes are not reproducible as they all depend on timing of multiple users.
Yes you just wanted your functionality implemented but given the complexity implied, when implemented, catering for a broader application is appropriate in my opinion. Also technically difficulty aside, the functionality has to fit in with Managers other features.
Maybe because you haven’t realized that this is what happens with custom fields right now. If you change one element of the list it won’t change the value of the custom field in the transaction… and it is how it should work.
No, I fully realize how things work now. I was just saying that your hope for a dropdown list that could be different every time you use the program—not just be created from an external list—raises the idea of dynamic linked content that changes a transaction after it has been created.
I am not saying you advocated that, requested it, or even mentioned it. But I believe there is a difference between being able to define a list from an external file and having changes to the external file redefine the list the next time it is used. And from there, it is not so large a step to reach the point where an already-completed transaction is changed by modifications to the external list. You might not think that should happen, but I suspect others would.