I have ten related databases, what is the best way to generate a listing of all unique fields in these databases?

Hi,

First of all, welcome to these Forums.

What do you mean by unique ?

The FieldNames( ) would return a list of all fields in a specific layout in a specific DataBase.

So if you set a Layout "AllFields" in each database, and drop all the fields there, you should get a list of those fields.

Then List Db1 &"

Oops,

may be you weren't looking for fieldnames....

Actually, if you use FieldNames(DBname,"") you will get all the fields that are in the file.

BobWeaver said:

Actually, if you use FieldNames(DBname,"") you will get all the fields that are in the file.

Why read The Bible when all I have to do is read Bob's answers.

Slightly different technique:

Use Status(CurrentFileName) and put a calc field in each DB:

"AllFields" = FieldNames(Status(CurrentFileName), "")

You can then view each file's AllFields in one of the files using relationships.

Sam

Thanks for replying.

I am a FMP user without prior scripting experience. Can you please explain your replies for my experience level? Thanks.

The 10 related databases were created by someone else. I need to merge my existing data from my single database into those 10 related databases.

As a first step toward matching the fields in my single database with the fields in the 10 related ones, I need to generate a (printed) listing of all of the fields in the 10 databases.

What I have done is to print the field definitions from the other person's main database. But it would be better if I could get a single list of the unique field definitions in all 10 databases.

By "unique," I mean that if any given field (e.g., student ID number) is included in more than one of the 10 databases, the list that I want would include that field only once.

Thank you again.

You might want to have a look at this sample file:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat.php/Cat/0/Number/51415/page/8/view/collapsed/sb/5/o/all/fpart/1

It's an automatic documenter utility. As well as doing other things, it will grab a list of all field definitions in the current set of open files. You can then search and sort by file name to get a list of the unique names.

Note: to eliminate the duplicates you will need to run a duplicate finder script like the one given in the Filemaker manual on page 10-13.

Thanks BobWeaver! I downloaded it and I'll let you know how it turns out.