Multikey Valuelist..use Global or not?

[overrider]

Hello,

Lets say i have two Files (tables if you wish). One is Contacts, one is Purchases. Now each Contact has a field describing its Status as either Active or Inactive, and another field describing its type as either being a vendor or a customer. now lets say in the purchasing table i want to add a new record and choose a vendor via a value list. I only want active vendors to appear though.

this is how i did it:

make a global field in the purchasing table called status , and fill it with the value "Active", make another global called type, and fill it with the Value "Vendor". Now i made a relationship from the purchasing table to the contacts table relating the two globals to the corresponding values in the contacts table.

this way works, i wonder however if there isnt a better way, possibly without globals, and if there was, would it make any difference in terms of performance or just solid/clever relationship design? i have pretty big files, size wise as file count wise, and i use this active global trick all the time, like picking active items, contacts, employees etc, so especially the status active global field is sometimes part of a few different relationships at once. any ideas, or is this the right way to do?

ps: i remember there was once a discussion, something like "global or not to global" but i cant seem to find it. anyone got the post id handy?

thanks for all suggestions

Edited February 13, 2006 by Guest

[Kent Searight]

That's the right way to make your conditional value list. Globals aren't going to affect performance negatively either, because there's just one value for all of your records.

ps: i remember there was once a discussion, something like "global or not to global" but i cant seem to find it. anyone got the post id handy?

I remember that topic also, but I don't know its URL. But I'll bet Soren was somehow part of that discussion since it talked about globals. :