Corrections

[Safety Officer]

I am a beginner in FMPro 5.5, however I have developed a fairly good relational database that is working so far. I have discovered after reading more that I have several errors that could be critical. I want to set my db up correctly and don't know best route. Errors are: My Pk is not a auto entered key, but is unique.

I feel I have too many entities in main file.

I am entering data through a portal that is lengthy and is causing many records in the child file.Lastly file names are too long.

I wondered if I can start over with a new set of files at our physical year? or can I correct the existing set of files? mthomas@Hemetusd.k12.ca.us

[Chuck]

First of all, it's not required that a primary key be calculated with an auto enter serial number. If you know that every record will have a unique number for your primary key field, that should be fine.

What do you mean by "too many entries" in main file?

How is the portal lengthy? Are there that many children of your parent file? What exactly is the problem?

Whether you begin with new files or correct the existing ones of any problems is up to you. Just because you've done things differently than many developers might have doesn't mean you need to trash what you've done.

Without knowing more about your system it's difficult to make a recommendation. There are standards that developers have tended to adopt, but they are mostly opinons, not rules. If you're system is working the way you have it, you might not need to make any changes.

The only one I would touch on changing is the primary key. How is it computed? How do you know it's unique?

Chuck

[Kurt Knippel]

Actually I would make each file a true PK, which is not ever seen or used by the end-user. Follow my article on this subject for more information.

http://www.fmforums.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=8;t=000018;p=

You can then also have a code that the user percieves as the primary key but is actually just data (like Account Number).

The benefit is that the user can NEVER screw up the system, because that cannot actually interract with the true PK.