Help - need advice on how to do this

Question

I have a form where a part number, qty received, and serial
number are entered, and I generate a request number.
(other information is entered as well, such as name, address,
etc.) So it is one record per request number, easily done and no
problems.
Now I am told that for each request number, there could be
multple part numbers and each part number may or may not have a
serial number.
I was thinking of splitting up the form and enter the name,
etc. first, then when they submit, it inputs into a table then use
cflocation to go to another screen, passing the reqeust nubmer, to
enter the part number, qty, and serial number. If they check a box
to indicate serial number, then I would like to autogenerate that
many serial number entry lines based on the qty entered.
Is there a better and more efficieint way to do this ? The
part numbers and serial number are in a separate table so the part
number will repeat but the serial numbers will be different.
Thanks for any help or advice.

Answer 1

Sounds like a shopping cart. I wouldn't store any data into a
db or generate an order number until the user has indicated that he
has finished entering data.
You will probably have to take a good look at your database
as well. You need a one to many relationship somewhere.