Relationship Diagram FM7 - lots of relationships

[tomp]

The Relationship diagram in FM7 is great - when there are few relationships defined.

I am currently re-designing an FM6 solution in FM7. Several of the files have 30+ up to 50 relationships defined. The diagram is of no value in this case - impossible to read.

Is there an alternate way in FM7 to display the relationships defined? E.g., the list format of FM6 and earlier?

TIA

Tom

[Søren Dyhr]

I am currently re-designing an FM6 solution in FM7. Several of the files have 30+ up to 50 relationships defined. The diagram is of no value in this case - impossible to read.

We were touching it vaugely yesterday in this thread:

http://www.fmforums.com/threads/showflat...true#Post145117

- the need for relations is not quite as large as it used to be, since the talk now goes on pathes by which data is pulled several relations away not even by using calcfields to display data. It is indeed a tough subject to digest - give it a stab:

http://previews.filemakermagazine.com/videos/541/GraphRules_full.mov

But the one single advice must be dupe the TO to different places each showing their own aspect of the relations instead of hedgehoging one TO.

Take a look at the graph at page 4 of:

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

--sd

[Fenton]

tomp, welcome to 7. I believe we all had pretty much the same 1st reaction the Relationship Graph, "Cute, intuitive; but this is going to be a mess with all my relationships!" My 2nd reaction was, "I'm going to need a bigger monitor."

But as I've built or seriously converted solutions in 7 I've found, as S

[tomp]

Lots to think about! I found the tutorial movie referenced by Soren very valuable to start shifting my thinking paradigm. And Fenton's encouraging and challenging thoughts help too. I'm going to read through the white papers as well (guess it's not wise to just jump into the pool - unfortunately, that's my learning style).

A couple of follow-on questions:

1)Does FM7 detect and prevent me from creating the circular relationship arrangement mentioned in the tutorial??

2)If I understand Fenton's comments about globals, one of my FM6 approaches is history. What I did in 6 was create a 'Common' or scratchpad file with a single record and a bunch of fields I used for manipulations, calculations, navigational trail, etc. Every file (28 in my solution) linked to that 'Common' file through a 'Constant=1' type field. It sounds like I can still use a scratchpad table, making all the fields 'globals', and reference the fields without having to define a multitude of relationships. Do I understand correctly?

[Fenton]

1) Yes, not to worry, it'll tell you. This is where you may have to create a separate TOG.

2) Well, if they aren't global fields, just being used as if they were, then you'd still need relationships. If they ARE globals then you only need 1 TO for that table, no relationships needed.

But then they have the behavior of globals, ie., separate for each user, load with any values preset on the served file, gone at the end of the session.

So globals and fields in 1-record files are not really the same. It depends on which you need. But if you need ANY 1-record type fields for a file, then you'll need a relationship.

But you'd only need 1 relationship from each table using the Common file, so it's not that big a deal. You know you can collapse the TO box to only a single line. If you do that to all (non-compound) relationships which are dead obvious from the name, it cleans up the graph considerably. Example:

Company_CompanyID

Not much question what field is being used.

Others should be collapse to their key fields. Always collapse boxes after using them. Use colors to differentiate tables (I do anyway). Align them nicely.

You also have to decide on the sort you're going to use for fields. If you change it, then your graph is a mess till you change it back. I tend to sort by name.

On reading the white papers, make sure you read Ilyse Kazar's chapter on committing records; in the big file (on the FileMaker conversion white papers web page). If you didn't use Exit Record/Request much in 6, you'll definitely need to add Commit Records/Requests steps to your converted files.

It'll take a while to get used to 7. But once you do you'll appreciate what they've done. Make sure you upgrade to 7.0v3, or you'll hit some rather nasty little bugs.