how many of X before this one?

[Kay]

Hello amazing problem solvers,

I have a file called Courses. There is a related file called Sessions. There are several Sessions per Course. E.g. Basketweaving 101's first Session is on Dec 17, second is Dec 19 etc. Some Courses will run for months. To match with curriculum etc., I want to generate a Session number in relation to the course, (not a serial number). E.g. February 4th might be Session 17 of Basketweaving 101. So I want the calculation to be: of all the Sessions for this particular Course, this Session is number X. Or said another way: how many Sessions with the same Course ID are dated before this one? (plus one) Any ideas?

Grateful Regards, Kay

[BobWeaver]

Set up a self-join relationship based on the course. Then the Session number for each new session will be

Max(Selfjoin::SessionNumber)+1

This will work if you use the set field in a script to set it. If you are using an auto-enter calculation, you will have to break it into two field definitions to avoid a circular relationship. First a Calculation field NextSessionID:

Max(selfjoin::SessionNumber)+1

and then define the SessionNumber field as autoenter calculation with the formula:

NextSessionID