Brain Teaser

customaware

Tom Ford will love this.... 😉

Ok. Here is the scenario.

We have a Dayshift and a Nightshift.
Arbitrarily, Dayshift starts at 07:00 and ends at 19:00. And obviously, Nightshift starts at 19:00 and runs until 07:00 the next morning.
While this can change the Dayshift Start and End Times are stored in System Settings.

The user enter a start TimeStamp and an End TimeStamp. For example... Start April 5 2017 02:30 and End April 22 2017 20:15
Notes:

The Start and End Time and be ANY time, either Dayshift or Nightshift (either PM or AM).
The Start and End Time could possibly be within the same Shift on the same Date or they could be any number of days/shifts apart.

So.... the challenge is.....

Given a Start and End TimeStamp, Create A Record for EVERY Shift (including partial shifts) between the Start and End Time.
For example: for the Start Timestamp above, April 5 2017 02:30, the first record that needs to be created will look like
05/04/17 02:30 05/04/17 07:00 NS
and the last record will look like
22/04/17 19:00 22/04/17 20:15 NS
AND we need to create a record for EVERY shift in between.

I have managed to get it VERY close but hoping someone might present a really slick way of doing it that was 100% correct.

Any takers?

tford

You know me well, Mark! When I saw "brain teaser" as the subject line, you can guess which forum post I clicked first.

Running out the door at the moment, but anxious to take a look later.

BLOMASKY

you do know, I would handle this using a SP to create the records... but... but.. you Do want an aware solution, right?

customaware

In reality Bruce, I only posted this as an example of a great exercise in working within the confines of Aware.

However, I would be really interested to see you have a crack at it in a SP.

Trust me though...... It is MUCH more complex than it first appears on the surface. You have been warned.

tford

I would build a BO (BO Name: Shift) which holds all the "normal" shift beginning and ending times and create instances for each shift that a user could potentially enter. These instances would then be static and used by the routine described below to build records you need.

I'll call the BO instances that you need to create between two date/times: UserShift
The logic to create UserShift instances would be something like this:

First record to be created:
1- Using Entered.Start_time (BO name for user data entry:Entered), find the correct record in the Shift BO that encompasses Entered.Start_Time. Create first UserShift record in the proper format using Entered.Start_time and Shift.End_time.

2- The middle section of the creation process would loop through Shift records where Shift.Start_time > Entered.Start_time and Shift.End_time <= Entered.End_time

3- The last record in would be created using similar logic as #1 above.

I'm sure it's a bit more complicated than I showed above, but I wanted to present the basic concept of having Shift instances created in advance which makes the processing logic a bit less cumbersome.

BLOMASKY

It is very easy using a SP to do this, but trying to do this all in Aware. My question, there is an option to create records for a numeric range: i.e. CREATE Transaction FOR EACH NUMBER BETWEEN 1 AND 3

My question, can I access this number so I could add a WITH Transactions.rownumber = NUMBER?

This does not seem to work

PointsWell

I'm reading this in the morning so if I'm off the rails on this that's my excuse.

What about two different BOs
1 - shift
2 - timesheets

If you create a timesheet then based on the start and end generate a number of shift records that are related to the timesheet (and by extension the worker).

create the shift records by calling alternating processes for day shift creation and night shift creation effectively creating a loop until you get to the end time which calls your final process then commit and end.

you'd need a BO to hold your place in the process

BobK

Mark,

You got me intrigued and I have put some thought into this.

I did not have time to completely flesh this out let alone create a BSV, but here is the general idea. This may be similar to what PointsWell was thinking.

Create a BO with the following attributes

TimeStamp StartTime
TimeStamp EndTime
Timestamp TempStart
TimeStamp TempEnd
Yes/No Done initially set to No
Duration WorkDuration
Yes/No isStartDayShift
Yes/No isEndDayShift

The user enters their StartTime and EndTime

The following rules are on the BO

1) Set TempStart to StartTime
2) Set TempEnd to EndTime
3) Set WortDuration to EndTime - StartTime
4) If StartTime is in the Day shift set isStartDayShift to Yes Else set it to No
5) if EndTime is in the Day Shift set isEndDayShift to Yes Else set it to No
6) if WorkDuration <= 12 Hours and isStartDayShift = IsEndDayShift (The StartTime and End Time are in the same shift) Then Create a shift record with the start time = StarTime and end time = EndTims, Set Done to Yes
7) If Done = No and the time part of StartTime <> SystemSettings Day shift Start or Night Shift Start (the start time is not on a shift boundary and a partial shift record is needed) Then Create a shift record with start time = StartTime and end time = the end time of the shift. Set TempStart to the end of shift time
8-) If Done = No and the time part of EndTime <> SystemSettings Day shift Start or Night Shift Start (the end time is not on a shift boundary and a partial shift record is needed) Then Create a shift record with start time = start of the shift time and end time = EndTime. Set TempEnd to the START of the shift time
9) (At this point, TempStart and TempEnd should both be on a shift boundary time) If Done = No and TempStart <> TempEnd Then Create a shift record with start time = TempStart and end time = TempStart + 12 hours. Increase TempStart by 12 Hours. (here is the magic) on the advanced tab for this rule, select the While Semantics box so that this rule will continually execute until TempStart = TempEnd and all of the shift records have been created.

Hope my pseudo code makes sense.

customaware

Thank you all for you input.

The reason I posted in the first place was that this seemed like one of those really interesting exercises that at the outset seemed rather trivial but the further you dug into it the more complex it became.
I have rehashed it a number of times and in the end found that making good use of BO Rules helped a lot. Initially, I used a good number of processes and as the the mud slowly cleared from my head I found I could push more and more into the BO with it's Rules which ultimately made the Processes that were really needed a LOT simpler.

Just for fun... I have uploaded my Design Logic notes for this and also the final bsv to https://awareimdevelopers.com in case anyone finds it of value.

Here is the link....https://awareimdevelopers.com/tipstricks/complex-date-time-problem.html

BLOMASKY

Here is my 0.03 cents worth (with inflation)
Variables in RegUser.
timeIn and timeOut = Entry Fields
HourAMShift (for my example i have it set to 9

MaxNumberOfRecords = 2 + 2 * # of Days between timeIn and timeOut

ComputedEndTime is 1st computed with if Hours timeIN<= HoursAMShift then Date TimeIN + HoursAMShift else DateTimeIn + HoursAMShift + 12

So, for example, if TimeIn = 4/1/2017 5AM and TimeOut = 4/10/2017 2AM
MaxNumberOfRecords = 2 + 2 * 9 (20)
ComputedEndTime = 4/1/2017 9AM

Now I have 2 process
One has IF MaxNumberOfRecords > 0
Decrement MaxNumberOfRecords then call Process 2

Process2
if TimeIN > Timeout do NOTHING
else Compute Temp Timeout as Less than ComputedEndTime or TimeOut
Write Records with TimeIn and ComputedEndTime
set TimeIn = ComputedEndTime
add 12 hours to ComputedEndTime

Call Process #1

Bruce

BLOMASKY

I am glad you posted this. This caused me to look through the docs again (and again..) until I found LOOP_ITERATION and then the solution was fairly easy with no recursiveness.

I uploaded my BSV in case anyone wants to see, but in simple terms
1) compute the # of days * 2 + 2 as max#OfRecords
2) compute the 1st ending time which is either the Hour that the shift starts OR if the timeInHours > ShiftStart its ShiftStart + 12
Create Records where the endTime has TimeAdd(ComputedEndTime, (LOOP_ITERATION -1) * 12)
then, fix the 1st row to have the correct starting time
delete any extra records (can be up to 3 and they are found by startTime > timeout
fix the last row to have the correct ending time

TimeCardTest.bsv.zip

36.63kB

customaware

Just tested that Bruce and it does not work properly.

If the Start Timestamp is 5th April 2017 @ 02:20 and End Timestamp is 9th April 2017 @ 01:30
then you should get these records....

But your yields this.....

BLOMASKY

I am uploading a fixed version, if you have the time, the last line (3rd) in the FixTimeCards Process did not work. I had to move it to a diff. process. Have any idea why? Summary I thought I could do the following in 1 process

FIND BO where .....
BO.attr = 1

FIND BO where ...
ThatBO.attr = 2

FIND BO WHERE ...
Delete ThatBO

But it seems like when I am working with the same BO Aware does not like it all in one process.

Bruce

timeCard.bsv.zip

36.67kB