I feel really stupid right now....I have been trying to grasp the whole concept of relationships for a while now and apparently just DO NOT understand.

Here is my problem (I think..)

I have a bunch of tables, but I will use just 3 for the example:

Table_1:

First_Name

Last_Name

emailaddress

City

State

Zip

...

UID

Table_2:

Cert_Type

Cert_ID

UID

Table_3:

Cert_Name

Cert_level

Cert_ID

Right now I set up relationships UID->UID and Cert_ID to Cert_ID

What I *want* is that when I go to enter a record I have the fields FirstName LastName, Cert_Type, Cert_Name and Cert_Level all on the same view(?) and I can enter in all of the info and I will have a list returned (with the option to add...) to choose from for the Cert Stuff...

Each time I go to the layout and add Table_2::Cert_Type I cannot choose anything (i specified pop up list or whatever it is, sorry..it;s early and I am tired), but I can never even SELECT it for some reason. The dashed lines represent the relationships (I hope I did them right)

Also It makes sense to me to seperate out City, State and ZipCode from Table_1 so as to not have repeating data, but apparently I don't understand this whoole relational database thing v ery well, because I am totally frustrated.

Any good books or good free tutorials out there that anyone can/will/might suggest??? I just do not understand....maybe somene can explain all this to me in idiot's terms:

To understand the new Relationships Graph, purchase Using FileMaker 7 by Lane, et. al.

You can have a portal of Table_2 records in the layout for Table_1, so you can add new certifications and see the old ones. You could also have the fields from Table_3 in that same portal. When you add a new certification, the Cert_ID should be generated automatically; you will then specify the type, name, and level (which could all be pop-ups).

I agree that Using Filemaker 7 is a great book for both beginners and advanced users.... Here is another good explanation of the new relational model in v7.

http://www.digfm.org/ref/FM7_key_concepts.pdf

This was the first thing I read back when v7 came out, and it was a much better explanation than the FM manual.