I've just completed a conversion for a set of datafiles in FP5.5 to FP7 for our FP7 Advanced Server. One of the FP5.5 relationships was defined with the first field of text global field with 20 repetitions as the key to a text field in the related file. The global was set up through scripts so that a portal displayed the single record in the related database as - in that database - the record's key field was unique.

Was absolutely gobsmacked when I converted this to FP7 to find that the relationship now displayed multiple records, many of which at first sight appeared to be unrelated. After several hours work I discovered that, in FP7, having numbers in ANY of the repetitons of the global field produced related records in the portal.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour, and is it possible to redefine the relationship so that only the first (or any unique) repetitive field is the key to the relationship.

My problem is that I have often used a text global with repetitive fields in my FP5/6 databases as a key in a relationship and have only cleared the specific first repetition when using it in FMP5/6 to establish the relationship. I don't want to have to go through all those databases to fix this issue as I convert them unless I have to. :-(

Sorry Rich,

This ability to use a repeating field as a multi-key is a feature of FM7/8 that you're going to have to account for.