Go to related record?

[Matthew F]

I'm migrating my solutions to FMPro7 and I decided to use try out the separation model for my main data files. At this point I'm hoping the extra effort will actually pay off but I'm already seeing that this complicates matters. For example, the types of modifications I most often make to our solution most often involves the creation of a new field definitions as well as modification of a layout. FMPro7 doesn't really save data in a separate file - the Field Definitions must be stored in the data file. This means I can't make changes without taking the solution offline. Also I now have more than one file to modify: My layout file and my data file. So what's the point of the extra work?

For several reasons I've decided not to fold the entire solution into one giant file. 1. To speed up the migration process, 2. To preserve some modularity to the solution. 3. To avoid having to buy a 30" monitor to view all of my Tables in one gigantic relationship graph.

However my problem is that the "Go to Related Records" script step no longer works to link to a related record in an external layout file. The script step only can link to my data file. A work around involves setting a global field in the database file with the relevant match field and then performing an external script in the layout file to find the related record. This is going to be a real pain because I have dozens of navigation links between files.

Am I missing something here?

[RalphL]

Have you ever solved this problem?

The interface file generally has no tables, but the relationship graph must have all the TO's necessary to support the layouts you want the users to see. This means you still may need that 30" monitor to see all the TO's.

I have not had proplems with the "Go to Related Records" script step.

[Matthew F]

I did solve this problem although the solution is not very pleasing. The problem arises if I have two or more interface files. "Go to Related Records" can't take you from from one interface file to another because they to do not have table occurances.

The solution is to create a script in the target file which performs a find for the record of interest. The script is called from the original layout and the ID number of the related record is passed as a script parameter.

Attached is are example files with one data file and two interface files. Clearly its preferable to avoid having multiple interface files, but for the reasons I mentioned earlier it is not always practical.

Cheers,

Matthew