Rapt Productions

Hello, I've got a self-joining table in which each record can have a parent record and multiple child records within the same table, like so: (people) client vendor employee (artist) (performer) studio_artist actor (dancer) musician ballet jazz hip_hop modern belly (values in parentheses are parent records to the subset below) I'd like to be able to create value lists using this hierarchy, i.e. a performer list which gave me a choice between actor, dancer, and musician, and which in turn let me choose one of the types of dancer. Because of the directions in which my company is expanding, I need for end users to be able to create these value lists, rather than hard-wiring the tables myself (which is why I set up the hierarchy of records to begin with.) Is this even possible? How do I go about it? Thanks for taking the time to check out my post! RAPTZILLAredux.fp7.zip

Well, at least I can take a little comfort in knowing that as a beginner, I should be having as hard a time with this as I am! These look like what I'm attempting to do - I'll try and figure them out. Thanks comment for your time and help!

I'm sorry, but I'm still lost. How do I set this up in a layout or a value list? I created a portal in the layout, but I can't understand the results I'm getting...

Are ChildTypes and ParentType the other occurrences of Type? And is ParentID the same as ParentTypeID? I apologize if I'm being dense, thanks again for the help.

Yes, I think that's it - a single table in which each record can have a parent type. I'm not sure I understand how to set it up, though - you mention three fields, TypeID, Type, and ParentTypeID, but then where does ChildTypes come into the picture? Thanks so much for the help!

I'm trying to create a table, "type." From "type," I want to be able to add table upon table - i.e. one type would be "people," and "people" would then allow for "clients," "personnel," "vendors," then "personnel" might have "editor," "cameraman," "admin," and so forth. What is the cleanest way to create this branching structure and allow users to define additional types (without creating redundant ones?) Thanks!

Hello, I'm trying to figure out a way to prevent a single record appearing more than once in a portal. I don't know how to work with the data in the portal fields since they aren't treated as part of the table I'm trying to affect. In the attached file, I've got two tables, contact and company, with portals connecting them. I've set up a button to create a new record in the other layout (i.e. create a new contact from companies) or to go to an existing record. My problem is preventing the same record from showing up multiple times in either portal. I apologize if I'm not explaining very well, I'm a filemaker newb and I welcome all suggestions and feedback. Thanks for your time! RaptClone12-9.fp7.zip

OK, after a couple days of poking at the file I think I finally understand what's going on. I wish I really could invest the kind of time needed to properly learn filemaker; it actually happens that it's only part of my job, I work as a video editor and happen to be one of the two guys in the office who has experience with the software. So now I'm trying to convert my end-user experience with filemaker 6 (some four years ago) into developer know-how with filemaker 9! I did read David Kachel's White Paper for FMP Novices, but I only absorbed maybe 40% of it. In any event - I just wanted to say thanks again for your patience and help on this project! It would have taken me weeks to get this far on my own, and weeks I don't have...

Thank you so much! This will probably sound ridiculous, but it never crossed my mind that a match field could also be a lookup. That's what's going on, right, that the match field in phone, email and address is looking up the ContactID? How do the company and contact ID value lists come into play? Thank you again for your help and advice!

OK, here it is - I apologize for the mess, this is only my third database. So please feel free to point out any other mistakes I'm making, I appreciate any and all suggestions! Thanks again for your time. Oh yeah - login is "sony" RaptClone.fp7.zip

Great! The Contacts_Multiple_Companies is exactly what I'm trying to do. But - I think I'm still missing something. I've tried to set it up in my Database. How are records created with Contacts_Companies? I made sure that "Allow creation of records" was checked, but - well, yeah, I think I'm missing something. It seems to me like something that would require lookups, but I couldn't find any... Thank you so much for the help!

Hi David, I wonder if you could explain to me a bit more about join tables? I made a little bit of progress and got hung up as detailed in this post but it sounds like a join table might be the solution... what do you think? Thanks again!

Thanks Robert. Truth be told, that went way over my head - but I appreciate it!

Hello. I am trying to create a project management database for my company. I had planned to set up tables as follows [color:yellow]................company[color:yellow]...................phone number [color:yellow]............./[color:yellow]................[color:yellow]............../ Project[color:yellow].......................contact - email address [color:yellow].............[color:yellow]................/[color:yellow].............. [color:yellow]...............personnel[color:yellow]..................mailing address I created the contacts, phone numbers, mailing address, and email address tables, and created a relationship between contact and the three other tables using FirstName = FirstName and LastName = LastName. I created portals under contact to show the multiple phone numbers, email addresses, and mailing addresses, and I thought everything was going great. Then I started trying to create the company table and realized that I didn't know how to proceed. I was hoping there was a way to create a portal in companies where I'd enter the first and last name and it would show me the portals that were showing up for that name within contacts. But I can't create relationships between the contents of portals, right? Am I going about this the wrong way? Does any of this make any sense? Thank you for your time!

Hello, thanks for taking the time to read my question. I have an idea of what I want to do, but I'm mixed up about how to go about it. Basically, I have a "Contact" table and a "Companies" table. From the "Contact" table, I need to be able to A) Create new records in "Companies" : Select existing companies from a drop down From the "Companies" table, I need to be able to A) Create new records in "Contact" (First Name, Last Name, Phone Number, Email Address) Select existing contacts from a drop down list sorted by name I apologize for the disjointed explanation - as you can probably tell, I'm not really sure how to think think about this problem, let alone solve it. Thanks again for any help.

Thanks for the example Lee - that was exactly the solution I needed! And thank you all for your suggestions.

I'm not sure that this can be done with conditional formatting, but I couldn't think of what a better approach would be. Basically, I just want to get my fields to show their own names when they're empty, i.e. the First Name field will contain the words "First Name" until you enter something into it. This seems like something pretty basic, I apologize for the newb question if it's answered in the help - as I say, I'm just not sure what to look under. Thanks in advance!

Thanks David. I think I've already jumped the gun in attempting to set up the relationship as I did - I need to take a step back and plan out my database better. Thanks so much for taking the time to suggest a solution, though, I really appreciate it!

First off, I apologize if this is answered elsewhere on this forum, but I wasn't able to track it down. I've got two tables, one for "companies," one for "contacts." The contacts are individuals who may work with more than one company, so I've got a field for "companies" in the "contacts" table. I want a portal in the "companies" table to show all the contacts who work with the company whose record I'm viewing. So I need to create a relationship based on the "companies" field in "contacts" containing a company's name, but not necessarily being limited to it. Does that make any sense? I feel like I explained it really poorly. Thanks in advance for any help!