Multikey, self-joined search $$$$$$$$

[pro-phile]

I am stumped on one aspect of my solution I am making for a local rental agency. I have a listing of about 2000 properties. THere is a properties page that includes the contact info for the property, and the property's features (ie; number of bedrooms, baths, type of parking, area in town, dog, cat, etc.).

Noww the fun part..... the owner wants a QUICK way to search for a property using MANY of the filds and multiple vlaues in the vlaue lists within the fields. For example:

I want to see what properties contain: 3 bedrooms, 2 or 3 bathrooms, in area 1 or 2 or 3, that takes cats and dogs with covered parking.

Right now, I can't search for all of those because of the "OR" and "AND" within the search so I cannot use the "FIND" feature very quick. It HAS been done in access, but the Access database is corrupt and I can't see how it was done.

I need to finish this up ASAP, so if any of you have any info, great, but if you'd like to try it yourself, I would have you finish up the solution. I bid it out low though to the client ... $700 so I could have some of their other business with their web site and hosting. But I just need this to be done! I've spent about 40 hours on it and it is killing me. So if you think you can do it for under that (just finishing it up) I'd be willing to break even on it just to get it through! Let me know! (E-mail me direct if you would be interested -- [email protected] )

[pro-phile]

I see that there was a topic posted below similar, they spoke of using the "constrain set" command in 6. But the extend found set seems to be what is needed. Now what about scripting that to a button instead of having to go through and search for a, then click find, then goto find, then search for b, then click extend found set, then goto find mode, then search for c, then click extend found set and so forth.

Seems as though there are a few of us wanting this and we're narrowing it down more and more.

[Kurt Knippel]

Well, given the files in the solution, I am sure that I could finish this.

Basically what you need to provide is a screen where they fill in the various find criteria and then script out the actual setup of the find. It really is the scripting which makes this tricky.

Searching is one thing that a system based on SQL can do quickly and easily since the SQL language is really designed for doing searches ("queries" as in the Q in SQL). Filemaker makes simple searcher easier, but complicated searches are more difficult.

Anyway if you send me the file, I am sure that I can find the time to work on it over the next couple of days. Contact me via e-mail if you wanna set this up with me.