Hi, I'm in the process of creating a simple "sales leads" database and am wondering whether it is better to us value lists or a related table for things like "lead status" or "industry".

Is a related table overkill? Is a value list in filemaker really just a related table cloaked in an easier GUI?

Thanks in advance,

Dan

Wouldn't "lead status" and "industry" just be attributes of your "sales lead"? If so, I see no reason to create related tables to distinguish your leads. (If I understand you correctly.)

Is a value list in filemaker really just a related table cloaked in an easier GUI?

Hmmm, not sure what you mean by this. A value list can be derived from a related table. Does this answer your question?

I would say that dynamic valuelists are much tougher to get working as expected than portals when you're IWP'ing your solution.

But making portals too long is definately something to avoid, the scrollbar makes you think the rendering must be easy - but no, everything is transmitted with the hogging of bandwith as consequence.

Instead should a tabbed layout be made to chop the data up in smaller chunks, to change it from preemptive into on-demand.

But as said in the beginning is this mostly a concern for networked solutions and especially IWP'ed.

--sd