chris@ncafe.com writes:

The problem - I would like to populate the form with the existing values and then allow the user to change the ones they want to. Some of the fields in the database are empty and it will always be that way. The length of the update statement will change. I do not understand, why you would want a varying length update.

If you populated the form with the current values and the user changes some of them, then the form contains the current values with respect to all fields it shows. Thus, you can update them in a single fixed length update. In cases, when I do require (or want) variable length updates (or inserts) I use code like the following (the code uses a naming scheme to select form variables that should update the database: variables with names ending in "_"): DTML: <dtml-let update_list="[]"> <dtml-in "REQUEST.form.items()"> <!-- or some other sequence --> <dtml-let name=sequence-key value=sequence-item> <dtml-if "name[-1:] == '_'"> <!-- or a different test --> <dtml-call "update_dict.append((name,value))> </dtml-if </dtml-let> </dtml-in> <dtml-call "SQLupdate(items=update_dict)"> </dtml-let> SQLupdate: Arguments: items Template: <dtml-unless items><dtml-return "0"></dtml-unless> update TABLE set <dtml-in items> <dtml-var sequence-key> = <dtml-sqlvar sequence-item type=string> <!-- this works only for string fields for other type, you either may branch according to type or use an external method that presents the value in a correct way based on its type --> <dtml-unless sequence-end>, </dtml-unless> </dtml-in> Dieter