7 dbs merged into 1

[PatrickI]

I'm a total newbie to FMP. I'm tackeling it to help out my wife who, over the years, has collected several tables all containing nearly identical information. I'm trying to set it up so she no longer has to keep opening 7 different databases, but just 1.

The specifics:

7 databases: each of these are a library of videotapes of music videos. The databases are broken out by clients (Virgin Records, Lava Records, etc). The records contain nearly identical information between each database. And luckily, each videotape is given a unique alphanumeric number that is not duplicated between databases - which seems to me to make it an ideal key.

The problem:

Not only do I want to create a single DB that will bring together all these seperate DBs, I want to do in such a way that I can - eventually - give each of the individual clients access to only their libraries over the internet.

So I'm struggling deciding do I want to combine all the DBs into a single large file, since there is so much overlap between each of these DBs? Or do I need to keep each DB seperate and figure out how to join them in a single Master interface for my wife's convience and allows easy compartmentalization between client libraries?

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

[Vaughan]

Decide which file you're going to import them into. In this file, make a new field -- Clients.

As you import the record from the other databases use the replace function to insert the name of the client (Virgin etc) into the set of records. Soo you'll have one file but you can separate the records out by searching on the Client field.

[PatrickI]

As you import the record from the other databases use the replace function to insert the name of the client (Virgin etc) into the set of records. Soo you'll have one file but you can separate the records out by searching on the Client field.

Thanks for the advice. It worked well. It's very much appreciated.

- patrick