At the company where I work the sales and product people have slipped some component items into the product DB and failed to ask if it was set up for that. So now I have to put that part together. I did a search of the forum but could not turn up any results. If anyone can point me to some relevant post or provide some basic strucural tips I would appreciate it, especially regarding inventory control as some ot the items will be only components but some will be sold individually as well as be a component of another item. I have done a lot of filemaking so I not worried about putting it together but at the moment I cannot put the picture together in my head. Must be Friday! Thanks !

When you have products and components, what you basically have is a linked list. This can be handled in one file with the notion of levels or in multiple files IF you know the maximum depth of the structure. All is fine until you try to roll up calculations (like total cost) through many levels. A single file and a multi-key approach to create an internal one-to-many relationship is probably a reasonable approach. Keeping everything in one file makes it easier to deal with a component as also a product.

-bd

Thanks bd, since the components only go one level deep and since a component can also being a sold item, I went with the internal one to many, now everything is linked and can be organized. I will contemplate the complexities of reports and inventory later.

gd