I hope this isn't off topic. I'm looking to set up a database for an on line clothing store, and am trying to figure out how to handle the fact that many items will come in differnt sizes, etc. How do I set up a database so that a user will be able to select from several different sizes, and perhaps even several differnt colors for a particular item? Of course there will be different options for each item, and I need to assign options for every item available. Can somebody point me in the right direction? Thanks. --Alan

There are a couple of ways of looking at this, but the simplest would be to view the different options on an item as attributes of that item, rather than as different items. For instance, you could have a database of shirts with attributes like color, size, etc. and make these attributes available to the user as pop-up menus.

Chuck

As a general topic, you may want to use a database to keep track of your inventory internally. Before you use FM to create a complete shopping cart system, I would 1) look at companies which provide this service for a monthly fee or 2) purchase a shopping cart software package. Shopping carts as an online service are really quite cheap.

If you are in the clothing business and not an experienced FM developer, you will work designing an on-line shopping cart system for a year and produce something vastly inferior to what you can purchase as a service or product. If clothing is your business, contract it out. If it is just a hobby, study up and start writing! -bd

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Originally posted by Chuck:

There are a couple of ways of looking at this, but the simplest would be to view the different options on an item as attributes of that item, rather than as different items. For instance, you could have a database of shirts with attributes like color, size, etc. and make these attributes available to the user as pop-up menus.

Chuck

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Right, but HOW do I go about doing this? Is it possible to make a bunch of value lists, and then assign the appropriate value lists to each item? Is there a w ay that I could set a field to the value of the item list that that item should use, and then have another field display the appropriate value list based on that setting?