automatically filling in multiple new records at the same time

[Gently Does It]

I am working in a biology lab and have developed several basic databases using filemaker 11 to help the lab organise their stocks of chemicals and so on. We have a fairly onerous excel sheet that we have to fill out for registering certain new reagents we make with the regulatory authorities and as these are a pain to use, they are not filled out regularly enough. I would like to simplify this for everyone by making a filemaker form/database that will automatically fill out as much detail as possible.

 

The data in question is that when we clone a piece of DNA we need to insert this into several different DNA vectors that are used for different things. Whenever this one particular piece of DNA is inserted into a new vector it must be registered, so for one piece of DNA there may be , lets say 6 individual entries in the database, all saying more or less similar things, but just having different target vectors. I hope this isn’t already sounding to weird.

 

I have a plan that I will have a ‘home screen’ with a field for entering the name of the DNA and then some tick boxes for each of the common target vectors. What I would like is that all my colleagues will need to do is tick the boxes for the vectors they want to clone the DNA into and filemaker will then automatically populate a new entry for each of the vectors specifically for the new DNA they have cloned. As I have some basic experience, but am admittedly very limited in my scripting knowledge, I am unsure as to how best to do this. Would it be best to have a button next to each of the vectors instead of a tick box that would run a script that would take the name of the DNA in the field and then make a new entry based on the associated vector? If so can anyone suggest how this would be best organised. I am guessing I only need a single table with two layouts, one for the home screen and one for viewing all the entries.

 

I’m sorry if this seems a bit convoluted.

 

 

Thanks for any help.

[ggt667]

Without seeing your tables it's hard to give an exact answer, my immediate guess is that you would use a combination of relationships and layouts( triggers may also apply to your use case ) to achieve some kind of OLAP/CUBE kind of thinking.

I just did something similar a couple of weeks back, if you would like my 2 cents worth, PM. Which properties do you sequence? Do you file for both polarities of the helix as well as the regular ATCG?

What I did was to export key fields from a selection of records to temp folder and reimport them in the tables are needed according to primary keys and rules.

Edited March 17, 2017 by ggt667

[comment]

29 minutes ago, Gently Does It said:

I have a plan that I will have a ‘home screen’ with a field for entering the name of the DNA and then some tick boxes for each of the common target vectors. What I would like is that all my colleagues will need to do is tick the boxes for the vectors they want to clone the DNA into and filemaker will then automatically populate a new entry for each of the vectors specifically for the new DNA they have cloned.

That sounds simple enough, but some details are missing:

1. Do you not need to create a record for the new DNA itself? Based on your description, I would expect to see a structure with 3 tables: one for the DNAs, one for the vectors, and a third table joining the two (this is where you would create the 6 joining entries in your example).

2. What exactly needs to be entered into a join record, besides the ID of the DNA and the ID of the individual vector? If there's nothing else, why wouldn't be sufficient to have the checkboxes in the DNAs table?

3. What information needs to be recorded about a vector? would it be sufficient to have a value list instead of a table (IOW, is there anything else besides a unique name)?