Many to many ?

[daniel_uk]

Hi,

I really hope someone can help. Firstly, here's what I'm trying to achieve:

I have two tables: 'members' and 'letters'. I want to be able to send any given letter to all of my members. So all the letters are common to all members. However, I'm really finding this difficult to implement in FMPro7.

Any suggestions would be really great.

Cheers, Dan

[-Queue-]

It's unclear what your specific question is. However, if you simply want to relate all members to all letters, use a relationship with the X (Cartesian join) operator to match all records in both tables.

[daniel_uk]

Thanks for the reply - I've got a join working (using the cartesian join as u suggested).

So on my first layout (which is based on members), I can view all my members as separate records, with a portal listing all the linked letters. Fine so far.

What I now want to be able to do is view another layout with each record based again on each member, however only ONE of the letters listed in the portal. E.g. Selecting a letter from my portal to send to all members.

So how then do I get FMPro7 to display only a given row in the portal?

I hope that makese sense!!

Thanks again

[-Queue-]

Create another relationship from a global field to the id field in Letters. Put a transparent button in the portal that displays all letters. Attach this button to a script that sets the global with the related letter id. Since you only want to display one related record, a portal isn't necessary. Just put the related field on your layout. Once the global is set and the relationship is valid, the related letter data will appear.

[daniel_uk]

Sorry but am a little confused...

Firstly did u mean create a new table, with a single field called 'global' and create a relationship to the Letters ID field...?

Also, how do I create a 'transparent' button and link it to a script? Sorry about this...

[-Queue-]

Not a new table, but a new table occurance. Go into Define Relationships and add one from the global field (either a text or number field, depending on what type the Letters ID field is, with Storage Options set as a global, so that the data is the same for all records in the table) to the Letters ID field. Call the TO whatever you like that makes the relationship obvious.

In Layout Mode, select the button creation tool in the Status Area. Create a new button, attach it to the desired script (Format -> Button) then set the button's fill to be transparent (so the fill pattern shows two transparent, overlapping squares in the Status Area) and remove any borders. Click and drag to move the button over the first row in the portal and set the button's size to fit within the portal's border.