clchildress

I hope this post is in the right place. I have a database with multiple patients. Each patient has multiple records, which is accessed through a portal. Pretty simple so far, but I need to be able to have a field which automatically tells a user how many records each patient has so that they don't have to count. I'm really not quite sure how to do this. The patients are on one table, and the records are on another. Each record has its own serial ID assigned at creation. Each record is related to the patient according to that patient's SSN. What's the best way to handle this? Edit: I was able to figure this out myself by simply working with functions until I found the right one. I am using the count function, by the recordid field.

My apologies; I should know better than to post when I'm in a sarcastic/caustic mood. There is/was no blame on the nurse; she has done a very fine job, being given what she was and having to run with it. I'm certainly no pro but I know my way around FMP much better than she and I was trying to help a co-worker swamped with too many jobs. Unfortunately hiring a pro is out of the question. As I originally thought I will just bite the bullet and manually import (copy/paste) the data. Not fun, but effective. I have other jobs here that keep me very busy and learning FMP has been a side job, not a priority. Hopefully this will be a one-time affair. However if anyone has a neat trick that might help the job go a little faster, I'm all ears!! edit: in response to above, yes the data is regularly backed up, and yes it carries a vast amount of very important and sensitive information. I didn't want to try learning scripting with this database really, but was trying to find a solution that didn't involve manual copy/paste work. Looking forward, it's probably not bad that I'm touching each and every record as I have already caught a large number of mistakes that have since been corrected.

Where I work, a particular person has had FMP thrown at them without any training and expected to make a working database that deals with patient care info. This person is a *nurse,* completely untrained in computers. As a result of certain parties believing that she must have a telepathic link to FMP instructors because hey she's a nurse, the entire database is flat. Instead of having separate tables for patient info and records, everything is just heaped together as a listing of patient care incidents. This has been going on for about 5 years. Now, I'm supposed to jump in and separate patient info from patient records. We have 9500+ records. As it stands, I get to go through all 9500+ (and growing daily) records, manually enter the patient info into the appropriate table, and then create records with the appropriate info and patient linked to it. This is a whole lot of manual data entry that I'd prefer to avoid. I have tried different ways of importing the data but haven't found anything that actually works. I'm not exactly totally new to FMP, but I'm certainly no pro and I don't really know any scripting yet. Any help whatsoever would be tremendously appreciated. Thanks! Edit: Please ignore the obvious mean nature of this message, and try to read through to the meat of the question. I apologize for barking sarcasm on the forums.

Ahhhh....now it all makes sense. Thank you very much for clarifying that for me!

You're probably right, and thanks for your suggestions. This database was created before I got here, and is a totally flat database. Do you think it would be better to create a related table for the calculated fields, or would it be simpler to include them in the table with all of the data? Also, which function would I use, to calculate the number of "POS" values that I have in the "Blood Culture" field? Sorry to ask so many beginner questions, but FMP has a lot to learn about!

I've browsed the boards for a while but haven't found anything specifically regarding my problem. I have a database with multiple text fields which I am now going to have to count regularly. Huge pain to do manually, as there are over 8000 records to sort through. I need a way to create a set of calculation fields that determine repetitions in a particular field with a specific value out of a value list. i.e. let's say that I have one field, "positive blood culture" and it has two possible values "POS" and "NEG", which are defined in a value list. How would I create a calculation field that would count the repetitions of "POS" (but disregard "NEG")and output that as a number? I guess basically I need a function that calculates the total number of repetitions of a particular text string in a given field.

Thanks; I think this can get me on the right track. I'm just very new to relational databases and it takes a certain way of thinking. I'll try this out and see how it works.

I currently have a flat database which has been functioning fairly well for some time, but which we are beginning to outgrow. Keeping track of maintenance costs, user and computer allocations, and other matters is becoming a real chore. What I want to do is make this relational so that I don't have to enter redundant information, and so that eventually (once I've learned how) calculate total cost of ownership for fixed assets. I'm running into a problem where I seem to have multiple many-to-many relationships, and so I'm looking for some advice on how to modify my database to work as a relational one. The first many-to-many is that I have locations with multiple employees and multiple employees that work at different locations. I need to represent all of the locations a particular employee works at, but I need to see which location is their *home* location. The second many-to-many is that I have some employees using multiple computers, often with a preferred or regular computer. Many computers are often used by multiple employees. I need to represent which employees use each computer (in a list), and when viewing the employee I need to see which computers that employee uses. The next problem is maintenance. I need to be able to show all maintenance records for a particular location so that I can (eventually) calculate total cost. I also need to be able to show all maintenance done to a particular fixed asset so that I can compare relative cost/worth of a particular fixed asset (say, the purchase price of a given printer, vs. what I've already doled out in maintenance costs). I know this is a lot to ask, and I can't ask it all of anyone, but if a few people could give me some pointers it would be *much* appreciated! I have attached an empty clone of my database so you can see what tables/fields/values I'm working with. Hopefully this will help. Assets__Users_and_Maintenance_Clone.zip