Do related fields need identical content?

[Eggshen]

This is kind of a newbie issue, but for some reason it's giving me more trouble than it should.

Basically I have a relationship between two databases. For my own purposes, these fields hold a serial-key type number. Each database has the same field, called accession number, both are text fields, and my relationship is based on these two fields.

In my master file, I have a serial number 1992.02.0008. I want this to find all records in the related file that BEGIN with those numbers, for instance 1992.02.0008A and 1992.02.0008B. It would seem to me that this would be fairly obvious, and Filemaker would do this without incident. However, it's not finding any related records.

Does the content of my related fields have to be identical in order to form a relationship between those records?

[QuinTech]

Does the content of my related fields have to be identical in order to form a relationship between those records?

As with any database engine, absolutely. Update your profile to let us know what version of FM you're using and we can suggest the best way for you to do this.

Also, you will typically get better results from this site if you post your question in the appropriate forum. The subject of this forum is: "Please provide feedback regarding the operation of FM Forums." Now you know.

Jerry

[Eggshen]

5.5, at the moment.

Is there any sort of wilcard character I can use?

Using * at the end doesn't do it.

Edit: Ha, and good point about the topic of the forum...I wasn't paying attention I guess!

[QuinTech]

You can use the wildcard for searches, but not relationships.

Is the initial string -- i.e., what you would like to put in before the wildcard character -- i.e., "1992.02.0008" in your example above -- is that always going to be 12 characters long? If so, you could make a key from a calc field, the calc for which would be:

Left ( SerialNumber , 12 )

Any relationship based on this field will match all records that have serial numbers that start with 1992.02.0008.

J

[Eggshen]

Alright, I'll look into a solution on that route. Thanks for the help in the unrelated forum!