I know I must be doing something wrong but can any one let me know, how to get this working ?

If ( HowManyStandOffs =< 0 Lookup ("tFTPULL_RTD", "text1",  If ( HowManyStandOffs2 =< 0 Lookup ("rFTPulls_TR", "text1", If( HowManyStandOffs3 =< 0, Lookup("rHMSO_3", "text1", lookup ( "rFT_Pulls" "Description" )))))))

Not an everyday programmer, so if you can change it to work, rather than just telling me what to change. 

This works perfect, but adding other if' will not pass checking.

if( HowManyStandOffs <= 0 , Description   , lookup "tFTPULL_RTD" "Text1")

Relationship name "tFTPULL_RTD"

Field Name "Text1"

if( HowManyStandOffs <= 0 , Description , lookup "tFTPULL_RTD" "Text1" , if( HowManyStandOffs2 <= 0 , Description , lookup "rFTPulls_TR" "Text1", if( HowManyStandOffs3 <= 0 , Description , lookup "rHMSO_3" "Text1")))  , "Description"

Re - Read and posted

if( HowManyStandOffs >0 , lookup"tFTPULL_RTD" "Text1" , if(HowManyStandOffs2 >0 , lookup "rFTPulls_TR" "Text1" , if( HowManyStandOffs3 >0 , lookup "rHMSO_3" "Text1" , Discription )))

We see you have been talking to yourself. Sometimes, just putting in down on paper make one see the problem oneself without help.

Glad you figured it out!

Thanks for the comming back, yes they say that talking to yourself are the first signs of madness, but sometimes it really does help, im still strugling with one small part of it, but I will keep trying, if I get stuck i will post agin.    

Was just going to say that you can run an ExecDQL in a derivation that return the result of the DQL which makes it much easier to structure the code but then I realised that you are useing 6 which definitely doesn't have this option. Hoever you can use OML to do more or less the same.

Thank you for the update,

I do use OML a lot in older forms, but I stopped using it when I tried to upgrade from 6.53 to DatEase version 9. A lot of the OML that worked fine in 6.53 didn’t work in version 9, after I imported the program on a trial version. I was told that some of the ways I’d been using OML weren’t really supported and would be removed in version 9. Because of that, I try not to use OML that much in any new forms, just in case I ever get the time to upgrade the system. But thanks for the information — I’ll keep it handy.      

There is a couple of paradigm changes in DataEase that has been huge thresholds like the move from DE6 to DE7 that was everything but sucessful. DE6 and before was developed in Borland Turbo C/C++ while the main shift from 6 to 7 was that the codebase was moved to Microsoft Visual C/C++. This on top of the change of Character sets while also introducing a lot of new flawed features, removal of Menu documents etc caused a lot of problems.

The move from DFD to DFW was a disaster and the second disaster was the move from DE6 to DE7 that brougth as many challenges and problems for users.

Over the following years first with the stabalizing of 7 in 7.2 and than the rapid development of new functionality and features in DE8.0, 8.1, 8.2 and finally 8.5 to 8.5.3 the product really started to work again.

One of the big problems in DE7 onwards was OML that fell over all the time. This was fixed in DE8 and we see almost no problem with OML in LE9.

However due to the lack of functionality outside of OML in DE6, OML was "over utilized" like a lot of other "hacks" to circumvent limittations in the core functionality.

In LE9 there is no need to use OML to circumvent functionality as there is standard functionality that now covers much more than OML ever did or promised to do, but there is one good reason for using OML and that is on events.

If you want something to be triggered on mousover, mouse enter/leave, timer (this is a new feature) etc. OML is the place to go, but the best us is just as a trigger that call an ExecDQL etc.