Guys,

Just curious, I've been playing/converting my solution to FileMaker 8, and it's quite neat compared to the previous version I was using (v6).

I've just noticed when defining a field, underneath the AutoEnter tab, calculated value, you've got the "Do not replace existing value of fields (if any)".

This feature's quite neat if you want to reformat data from fields within the same file. However I thought I would take this one stage further and try and populate/reformat data (automatically by unchecking "Do not replace existing value of fields (if any) option ) from related files - but this doesn't work. Has anyone managed to use this autoenter - calculated value feature, to update fields, where data is coming in from related tables automatically when the related field changed?

Cheers

Jalz

No. It only applies to referenced fields located within the same table. A script is necessary to modify fields which use an auto-enter calculation, when their referenced fields are not local. Of course, you can leave the field as an unstored calculation in many cases; but if that is not feasible, you could look into EventScript to trigger an update of the value.

Thanks Queue,

Thats a shame, thought could have stored and indexed related values more easily using this option.

How do most of you gurus out there store related values and deal with changes to data in the master record, so that the child records get updated, as I'd like to use those fields in relationships. Are there any simple examples out there?

In some cases, a script can update the related records, in other cases reworking the relationships may do it. A scripted update requires either an EventScript plug-in or a process script that is run when the user leaves the screen. The relationship idea works by adding TOs of the parent and child, and filters through the parent fields. For example, if you have an invoice system with related line items, and you wish to find all the line items that were ordered on a given date, you could keep the Order Date in Invoice, and filter through the Invoice table's Order Date, showing the related Line Items.