Using Search to display records in Portal

[Lakota]

Hello All:

I am stuck here. I have two tables in my database that are direct imports from Excel data. I am trying to use one of the tables as a search form and have the results from the second table display for the users to interact with. I think I am looking for a portal solution, but im not sure.

Any thoughts would be great.

Thanks

Lakota

[QuinTech]

Say you have parents and children. You want children to be in the portal and parents not in the portal, so that a user can find for a given parent and see all the children, ages, bedtimes, etc. You need some sort of unique identifier (a name will work, but a number like Social Security number or Government ID number is better if you have it) for the parent to appear in both files. Let's use parent name; make a relationship from "Parent Name" in the Parents file to "Parent Name" in the Children file. Now, in your Parents file, drop a portal using this relationship onto your layout; set it to show, say, 3 rows. Now put some fields from that relationship into that portal, and you will see multiple children for each parent.

Does this analogy help?

Jerry

[Lakota]

Jerry:

That is fairly accurate. The problem might be in the relationship though. I have very little to go on with these tables. Your idea will work, i just have to get more info from the users, i think that will help.

Thanks

Lakota

[Damocles]

Here is a very limited example of relationships and how they "look" from one file to another. I used portals in the example, and tried to use self-explanatory names for fields and relationships. To see the relationship that each portal uses, click on View-->Layout and look in the bottom left corner of the portal.

Let me know if this helps any or if there are areas that just don't make sense.

Paul

Simple Relationship.zip

[QuinTech]

Yeah, no matter what else you have, you're going to need some unique identifier. If the users can't provide that for you from the Excel files, you could generate it yourself. If you script the import in the right way (that is, selecting "Perform auto-enter options on import") then each record imported will have a unique ID which can be used in the relationship. Although those won't necessarily match up with anything in the related file, since (for the purposes of your files) these ID numbers will be random.

I think you're right, the best idea is to have the initial user generate a unique ID of some sort.

Jerry

[Lakota]

Paul:

Thank you for the explanation. It worked out well. Here is my next question then:

I have data from both of my tables being displayed in the portal when the user run an initial search. That said, the resulting data displays a second level of data that needs to be selected. The resulting portal data does not need to be altered at all, it is helping the user select an number of vendors that meet the inital search criteria and the secondary search criteria. My problem now is, how do i get the users to mark the data in the portal and have it copy down to a table that they can actualy change?

The initial search generates a list of vendors by price, the secondary search generates a list of vendors in a range acceptable for that particular project. The data that I need to collect from the user should go into another table, leaving the portal data unchanged.

Its the selection process that I am have problems with.

If you need an example, please let me know.

Thanks

Lakota

[Damocles]

Lakota said:

I have data from both of my tables being displayed in the portal when the user run an initial search. That said, the resulting data displays a second level of data that needs to be selected.

I don't think I follow this... You have a portal in one database that shows records from another (related) database. I'm not following "second level of data"....

The initial search generates a list of vendors by price, the secondary search generates a list of vendors in a range acceptable for that particular project.

This looks lilke you just need to use multiple search criteria, not necessarily do multiple searches.

The data that I need to collect from the user should go into another table, leaving the portal data unchanged.

Are you getting the search criteria from the user? (which vendor by criteria, price range, etc.)

Please provide an example, or a clone of the databases. I'm not sure I understand the question. Thanks!

paul