Losing data right after input

[Fred in Seattle]

I've been using the same database program (that I wrote) for over a year. It has 4 related tables: 1)BORROWERS 2)NOTES 3)EXCEPTIONS 4)COLLATERAL. I own a company that provides examinations to commercial banks. The tables are all linked with "BORROWERNUMBER" field, a unique field for each borrower in the bank. NOTES, EXCEPTIONS, and COLLATERAL are child tables linked to BORROWERS, the parent.

I input "exceptions" (things that are wrong with the loans) in a Layout that uses BORROWERS as the main table and EXCEPTIONS as the child with a one to many relationship. This has worked smoothly for a year now.

All of a sudden, and only at one bank, when I enter exception data in what I call the "Exception Input" layout, the data disappears or is just not there when I go back. For example, I can add exceptions to one borrower, go the the next borrower, add more exceptions, but when I go back to the first borrower, the fields are empty. Oddly enough, a search for "non-empty" exception fields results in a list of the parent table (BORROWERS) that I have input data to - except the fields are blank. No, the font is black - that's the first thing I thought of.

What in the world could cause this? BTW, I import the BORROWER and NOTE tables from data supplied from the banks' mainframe computers (usually in Excel or ASCII form).

Can anyone please make a suggestion for further troubleshooting on this issue?

Thank you to anyone kind enough to respond.

Fred

[Lee Smith]

Hi Fred, and Welcome to the Forum.

A couple of questions first.

Has the file ever failed?

Has FileMaker crashed when the file was being used?

Was this a file created in an earlier version of FM and then converted to v7/8?

Do you have a clean Backup of the file?

Lee

[Fred in Seattle]

Hello Lee,

I have used this database since version 6 or earlier. I work on it all the time, but always save as an empty "clone" to import my new client bank data. Therefore the present copy is an evolutionary copy that goes back for probably 100 or more "clones". I have no "original copy" since I evolve it everytime I use it, and with every different bank. Wow! that even sounds hopeless to me.

Odd thing is, I have several banks going right now, all cloned from a prior file, and this one bank is the only one that has the problem. It's almost as if the imported data makes a difference, but after all this time I've never had a problem before.

My process is this: I contract with a bank to review their loan portfolio. They provide me with a full table (ASCII or EXCEL or whatever) of their loan portfolio. I take a recent completed bank and create an empty "clone" of that database, and import the new data, rename, and go to work. I have not imported anything to the table I am having problems with - I input findings to that table only (it is a child of another table with imported data).

Again, several similar files work fine. I just started another bank today, and imported their data - the problem doesn't occur.

Filemaker has never crashed with that or any other file (guess I'm lucky).

Fred (Whew! Bet you are sorry you were kind enough to ask!!!)

Edited May 22, 2006 by Guest

[Lee Smith]

As far as I can tell, you have pretty much eliminated a lot of the areas that cause file corruption, except I'm not clear if all files, good and bad are on one machine or not?

Given that they are all on the same machine, then I suspect that the data is being posted to a second copy of the same file.

Lee

[Fred in Seattle]

The files are on the same machine, and on my local network. I wonder. . . Thanks for the tip, I'm going to explore that.

I really have eliminated everything else, I think.

[Fred in Seattle]

Darned if I didn't find my (MY!) problem. I was losing data right after input, but a search on the field would get all the fields with data (but showing blanks).

Here's what was happening for anyone interested: As I mentioned, I import all of my data from different bank clients' host computers. Then I add a notation of issues found when we review the files (called "EXCEPTIONS"). I have an EXCEPTION table that is linked to a BORROWERS table using BORROWERNUMBER as the linking field (a one to many relationship).

Since I import data, sometimes the BORROWERNUMBER field is not a number! Bingo!! In this case the borrowernumber field at the bank is a text field with a portion of the borrower's name. Of course, when I added and searched using BORROWERNUMBER as the link, the data in input didn't show, but it was there all the time. I guessed it by noticing that two loans showed up fine, the rest didn't. Why? The names of these were "4th Street Investors", and "3rd Avenue LLC". Filemaker picked up the 4 and the 3 and made the link, but didn't link any other records because they were all purely alpha.

I've been sick over this because I thought there was a problem with Filemaker, but no, the problem was an inexperienced programmer, ME! Well, that's how I get experience. . .

Thanks for your input over the last few days.

Fred