Relationships amongst fields in a Portal

[AeroGuy]

Hmm.... I posted this question to the "Portals" section of this forum... but I think my problem may have something to do with relationships as well so i've copied/pasted my question below.

Thanks for any help, or suggestions.

~me

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Is it possible to search through and/or sort records found in a portal?

I have a portal that displays fifty lines of info... the way i have it setup right now is that, on each line, i have placed two fields that are read-in from another file called BillableX and TestsPerformedX, respectively. In the file that these fields are read-in from, I have fifty value-list-fields ("yes" or "no") that tell the user whether or not a certain test has been completed and if it is billable (these fields go down the page vertically); each field is numbered, i.e. Billable1, Billable2, ... Billable40. Adjacent to each value-list-field, are fields that tell what test was performed; these fields go down the page vertically as well and are numbered TestsPerformed1, TestsPerformed2, ... ,TestsPerformed40.

So, all this info goes into a portal in another file. What I want is to be able to, say, go into find mode, type in one of the BillableX fields, run the search, and then have only the fields with the value "YES" show up in the portal as well as the adjacent/related TestsPerformedX info next to it.

It doesn't quite work when I try it... I think my main problem might be that FileMaker has no way of knowing which BillableX field is "attached" to which "TestsPerformedX" field. Or maybe portals can't do this anyway? You think I should post this same question into the "Relationships" section of posts?... yeah, I probably should.

Any help, comments, suggestions would be appreciated.

Regards,

Lutfi

[Ugo DI LUCA]

A few comments on the structure as a start.

1. Repeating fields and relationships :

Even if the 50 fields you mentionned aren't really repeating fields, they act as such. They are repetitive, and limitative.

What would happen if you had some more tests to add. You would need to constantly rebuild the Layout.

A better way would be to have an external file (Tests.fp5) with a record for each value, and use these records are values for a list.

2. Search in portal.

It's possible to search in a portal, but it doesn't give really accurate result. All finds should be made in the related file instead. I suggest you have some reading with DJ's article about "Find in Portal" -Article Section -

3. Filter and Sort.

Without naming it, what you seem to be looking for is to filter the related list of records, so that you only gets those records for Test5 and relative results.

If you adopt the Value List trick mentionned in 1, it would be rather straightforward to involve a global (or anything else) and filter the portal to get the results. - Search for "Filtered Portal" or "Filtering Portal" here to get some more insight.

4. Line Item.

I have the feeling you're dealing with a Many to Many relationship, but I doubt you actually set your relational structure to allow Many to Many relationships. This would explain part of your 50 repetitive fields. You probably need a Join File, also called Line Items, where multiple tests could be linked.

HTH.