Keyword Search

[Donna]

Is there anyway to get FileMaker Pro to search every field in every related database for a term/word? It is something I have been able to do with other database programs and need to be able to do with FileMaker.

Has anyone done this kind of thing successfully?

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

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Originally posted by Donna:

Is there anyway to get FileMaker Pro to search every field in every related database for a term/word? It is something I have been able to do with other database programs and need to be able to do with FileMaker.

Has anyone done this kind of thing successfully?

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This is possible, but would need to be explicitly scripted.

Now, there might be a plugin that allows this kind of thing.

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Kurt Knippel

Senior Filemaker Developer

http://www.inthescene.com

mailto:[email protected]

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[Donna]

Glad to hear that it _is_ possible. What would be the most elegant way to script it?

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

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Originally posted by [email protected]:

I've only just started using this program, so I don't very much. Have you tried making an additional calculation field in your database that combines all of the fields you want to search into that field? I don't know if this would make your records much larger or not if it is a calculation. Anyway, that should work. Does anybody know what that would do to a record size?

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This method would efficively double the size of each record. However Filemaker only indexes the first 20 characters of a field, so everything after that would be wasted.

I would simply set up a script that performs a series of finds, checking to see if the resultant found set is what you are looking for and if so, halt the script.

The very first thing that I might suggest however is to refine your design and revisit why you need to perform this kind of search. My guess is that this is NOT actually needed and the same ultimate goal can be accomplished with MUCH less work and maintainence.

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Kurt Knippel

Senior Filemaker Developer

http://www.database-resources.com

mailto:[email protected]

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[danjacoby]

Create a global field, called "searchword".

Script a find as follows:

copy[searchword]

enter find mode

paste [field1]

new record/request/page

paste [field2]

new record/request/page

paste [field3]

etc. etc. through all fields

perform find

et voila

HTH

Dan

[[email protected]]

I've only just started using this program, so I don't very much. Have you tried making an additional calculation field in your database that combines all of the fields you want to search into that field? I don't know if this would make your records much larger or not if it is a calculation. Anyway, that should work. Does anybody know what that would do to a record size?

[Donna]

Thanks for your replies. I knew that the calculation field option was not an option owing mostly to the fact that my records will be quite large.

I DO in fact require this field as I am designing a searchable database for archival descriptions and if it is not possible to search for a term that could conceivably appear in anyone of say ten fields in anyone of ten tables, I am not offering a very searchable option.

Given this info, has anyone done something similar? In other words, the search is performed in a number of fields in a number of tables and then only the relevant part of the hierarchy is displayed to the user.