Nested portals

[FSRGuy27]

Is it possible to nest portals within one another? I have a filed called Order Entry where you enter each PO with all of the parts in it in a portal to PartOrderJoin. I have a separate layout in Order Entry where I do the receiving for each PO. Right now, I have a repeating field that lets me enter 10 separate instances of receiving each part (I need the capability to receive each part on an order multiple times).

Since I set things up this way, I have learned the error of my ways (NEVER use repeating fields if you can avoid it!). I would like to be able to make the quantities received relational. To do this, I would have to nest a portal to a new file that would have a PO Number, Part Number, Date and Quantity Received WITHIN the portal in Order Entry. Is this possible? Is there another way I can set this up so that it will work and I can get rid of my repeating fields? Help!

Thanks for any suggestions.

[falkaholic]

short answer:

A: no you can't nest portal. that would be rad though

B: yes, do not use repeating fields

[Fitch]

You can't nest portals, but you can get the results you want anyway. It's not unusual for a solution to require many-to-many-to-many relationships. E.g., a company has many contacts, each of which has many phone numbers. Here's one way to approach it:

1) Make a new file for Receiving and relate it to the Orders file and or the PartOrderJoin file.

2) Set up a layout in Orders with a portal to each of the related files.

3) Create a global field gPart and make a relation gPart::Receiving.

4) Now make a script that sets gPart to the POJ id, and attach it to a button in the POJ portal.

I.e., you go to an order, you see the Parts in the POJ portal. You click a part in one of the POJ rows, and in the Receiving portal you see the related items.

Hope that's enough to get you started.