Shrubman

I've been following with great interest all of your responses. I haven't had time to sit down and try to digest them, though. I have to admit I'm not working on the level you guys are! I'll try to review the thread tonight and add some responses. Thank you all.

Thanks for the response, but as I tried to make clear in the first post, the lack of accurate data prevents me from assigning complete dates to each record.

I'm trying to think of how to convert something I can imagine graphically into a format I can put in a database. For instance, say I have a piece of chain, made up of 4 individual links, each painted a different color. The first link in the chain is red, the next blue, the third link is green and the fourth is yellow. I have a rule that says I must maintain those relative positions, even if I add or remove links from the chain. (So, I can create a longer chain of red, purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, or a shorter chain of red, blue, yellow.) Furthermore, any new links, once added, have to preserve their relative order to all other links. Is this possible to translate into the sorting of records in Filemaker? Comment, please forgive me if I've restated what you've already described with your "Precedences" table above.

Thanks for your input.

If I understand your response...yes.

In the first statement, I mean that I imagine a database where records can be sorted chronologically despite very approximate dates. Someone might tell me, "well, when I was a boy I remember xyz business being there." If I know what business is in the building now, I can enter in "xyz business" as being earlier, but unless or until I have better date information, I'd like to avoid entering it. Over the large span of time I'm tracking (back to the 1800s) properties have been split and combined, address numbers have changed, even street names have changed or been rerouted. The only constant I can imagine is geographic location.

Your third answer gets to my issue. Most dates I have are approximate. Much dating is determined from historic photos. I may be able to approximate the date a photo was taken but it doesn't tell me duration of that business. That's why I'd like to avoid making specific dates too important to the table since their accuracy will be questionable.

Hello, I am creating a database of properties in a city. I want to organize known changes over time, (physical changes as well as type of use, business names, addresses, etc.). Just about the only constant over time will be a rough GPS location. In many cases, I cannot ascertain with certainty an exact date of physical changes or the duration of a business occupation. However, for the most part I know the relative chronology. How can I maintain a known chronology among records, yet, as my research provides new information, be able to add new data within the chronology? For example, let's say I know of 4 businesses that occupied a building between 1950 and 2000 and they are in the databse in a way that they can be sorted chronologically. Let's say I later find out there were two other businesses that occupied the same building for short periods within the same period. I would want to be able to add them to the database without disturbing the chronological relationships already established. Can anyone recommend some approaches to this system? Thanks in advance!

Thanks.

Hi folks, I'm back to database building after letting my last creation sit tight since FM7. I've had time to figure out what people do and don't like about our database and I'd like to know if I can implement a few things to accommodate them: 1) Is there a way to create a new record or search for existing records by simply clearing and re-writing into a field? For instance, if I have a field for a customer name, I would like to lock existing data against editing and instead treat any attempts to modify the field as a search...if the search produces no results creation of a new record is offered. Is this possible? 2) Back and forward buttons: is SeedCode's "Back Magic" the best way to implement this? 3) Currently our contact log feature requires the click of a "create new" button before typing information into the field. Couldn't simply clicking in the text entry box do the same thing? As you can see, I'm still a novice when it comes to this stuff so please forgive me if these are extremely basic questions.

Folks, My attachment has been fixed. Anyone care to give it a look? Regards, Evan

Hi all, I'm having trouble integrating Launchit with our current setup. I have created a new table called "documents", adapted all of the scripts and set up a portal in my projects window. I have linked the documents table with the projects table with the project id as a foreign key. Still, when I click on the add file or add folder icon in my portal, the script launches, but after I select the folder or file in the dialog, I am brought to a new project entry screen and nothing is in the portal. I'm gonna attach a clone of my file. Username and password are both "admin." Finally, I would still most like a system that would have two way communication between the linked folder and the db. That way, I would hope that i could set up filemaker to have an always up-to-date list of the contents of the remote folder. Is this possible? ODD_Clone.fp7.zip

I guess this issue kind of confirms my suspicions regarding a watched folder concept. Is there a solution that will update the conatents of a container field in real-time, to keeep the remote folder and the FM7 file synched? I'd love to hear about such a solution...from anyone. Evan

Just to make sure I understand this correctly, are you able to have multiple different folders linked, one for each "project" in my case? I would want to make sure that the "clear" script you mention would only clear record related to the project I was vierwing at the time. Finally, is there two way communication? I'd love to have the iported document list change if the remote folder contents were changed. Thanks, Evan

Hi, I'm trying to make this plugin work for our solution. I have tailored all the scripts and tables to work with our filenames. What I'm unclear on is how to integrate their product with our existing forms. Does one create a portal to the launchit table? I'd like to know how you have integrated the product. Thanks, Evan