Relationship, value-list mess

[DanielS]

OK, probably a pretty easy situation for most of you, but I am at wits end! I have file A that contains products and file B that contains various documents that might be attached to these products (rebates, specs, reviews, etc).

I want it simple to attatch records from B to A, the easy solution appeared to be populating a value list from B for use in A. This works well! Documents can be added (up to five per product) and all goes well on that end.

I think, however, that there must be a better way that would be more elegant and robust. For example, if I change the name of a document in B, it does not propogate through A (I could do a script that would step through A manually changing every entry, but that seems a bit brutish and slow). Similarly, entries in A are not deleted when the document is removed from B.

I hope that I've made the situation and my hang-ups with it clear, because it seems that I am missing something that is right in front of my face... . Any suggestions, pointers, hits with the clue-stick???

TIA!

[Ugo DI LUCA]

Once a value is entered in a field, this value wouldn't change even if this value doesn't exist anymore. The only way to make it change is to use a lookup and a relookup to update the field.

One way I can think about is to number the Values in your File B, use a One to One relationship from A to B and a lookup field.

Example :

Relationships : OnetoOne (gHook::c_Hook) and Color (n_color#::n_color#)

File B : Colors

c_Hook (indexed =1)

n_Color# (1,2,3,...)

t_color (Red, Yellow, Black)

File A :Products

g_Hook : (global=1)

Product_ID : 1,2,3,4

Productdescription : Boat, Car, Bike, Plane

n_color# (value list - use values from file B (related records OnetoOne) - select n_color# and also at right t_color)

t_Color : (lookup from File A:n_color::FileB:n_color)

This way, the value list selected in n_color# will look like

1 Red

2 Yellow

3 Black

t_color will be populated by lookup according to the n_color# selected.

A relookup would update the values in all the file if you happen to change the colos in the File B.