Say I have master record A and master record B (maybe two records representing entries for two Companies). Below that I have different detail records (maybe one for Invoices, one for Orders, one for Employees, etc). As part of a data cleaning exercise I discover that in fact Company A and Company B are the same Company. Now I want to merge these into one Company. Today, this is quite a lot of manual work.
A Merge function might work like this: - While VIEWing record A press on MERGE - From all other records in that table select record B - Display all editable fields for A and B side by side, highlighting ones which are the same and ones which are different - Provide tickbox to decide whether the remaining record (A) will keep it's existing data or take the data from B - Press Save and make sure that any validation rules are observed - transfer all data at Record level from B to A - for all detail/child records of B, replace the reference to B by a reference to A (this is the big win)
