Importing Info from Different Sources

[johnrh]

I have three remote users who all use a runtime version of the same database. The plan is to let these users edit records in their copy of the file and then export the changed records and e-mail them to me where I will combine them and keep a master copy. Periodically I will then issue back out a combined copy of the new data which has been obtained from the three users. In this way everyone will regularly get an up to date copy

Therefore I need the ability to import all three datafiles (from the 3 users) to maintain one master database on my machine.

Its this import bit that I am stuck on. How can I take data from three different sources relating to different fields in the same record and combine them to update the master so that it shows info obtained from the three users.

I realise that the runtime version is only single user.

This may not even be the best way to tackle this problem but it was the only way I could think of. So if any of you guys out there can help

or point me in the best direction I would really appreciate it.

[jasonwood]

Well... first you need serial numbers to match with.

I'd set these up so that each user has a separate leading character so that no two users can have the same serial number when creating a record.

When you import, you'd match based on the serial number... but if two users modify the same record... that's getting messy. I'm thinking you're going to be needing to somehow keep track of which fields in which records have been modified, then import with a script through a relationship (rather than the import command). Yikes!