Multiple Criteria Relationship w/out calc. index?

[chavito]

Dear All,

I have been desperately trying to find a solution for the following problem:

I have an over 100.000 record db in which I need to perform fast finds. Since one find may result in over 10.000 hits I need to be able to easily specify further after performing the find. I would like to do this w/ a self-join and portal, basing the self-join on 3 global pop-up lists. I've read about using a calculated key to these fields, but this is not an option because in some of the records, the length of these fields may supersede the maximum index length of 20 characters, and not all 3 fields have to contain a value. Is there any other way to do this?:

I want to thank you all in advance for lending me some of your brain capacity here!

Chavo

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Added july 4th:

I finally got my hands on fm7. So now I want to try using those multiple criteria relationships. But still I can't get it to work. I have been looking all over the place for a portal filtering solution that allows for one or two of the three global criteria fields to be left empty. I tried using a multiple criteria relationship, but this also requires all search fields to be filled to get any hits, just as my calculated leftkey based on the global search fields and the same rightkey for each record did in fm6. Anyone an idea?

Thanks alot again!

[Fenton]

I would say your best bet would be to upgrade to 7 if possible. Its index limit of text fields is up to 108 characters. It also supports a "compound" relationship match, so you could do all 3 fields at once. S

[chavito]

Thanks! Yet another reason to tell my boss to get fm7! For now, I'll see what I can do with a multiple step constrain search.