Sum a field Dynamicly

[bpal]

I posed this in another location on this site and didint get any responces so I am trying here as it might fit better here

Oh so I've got this to work in a sense but not how I need it to work.

I have 3 databases:

1)List of Activities

2)Scheduling Database that uses a of activities generated from Database 1

3)A video logging database that also uses the activities list generated from Database 1

As of right now for summaries if you are in the Logging database there is a layout with a dropdown and you can chose a activity and it will tell you how many time that activity occurs in the logging database. The dropdown is a dynamically created list from the activates database.

What I would like is a list of all activities and then a sum for that activity. I know I am able to do this by creating a calculation and summary field for each activity but I don’t want to do this as the activity list can be added to or removed from on the fly.

What I would like to have is in my activity database a field for each activity that says Logging Sum _____ & Schedule Sum _____

Have a script or calculation that basically looks at the other database and checks to see how many times each activity appears. & it should get the name of the activity from the current database record.

EX/

Activity Name = Swim

Logging Sum = 2 (Checked Logging for amount of times "Swim" was present)

Scheduling Sum = 1 (Checked Scheduling for amount of times "Swim" was present)

Or if I am able to create a dynamic list separately in the Logging & Scheduling database that tells me how many times each activity appears. As I said it currently works with a drop down but that means I need to manually check each activity, which at the moment is 150+.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I hope I made some sense and someone out there is able to understand me. :

[Søren Dyhr]

This is a many2many structure so a table is missing say the person enrolled in the camp. Reporting should be done in the join...

What do you mean by dynamic? To an certain extend could you get away with unstored calc'field telling you these figures.

But the straight and narrow way to accomplish this is but making a GTRR(SO) from the person if only one persons activities needs to get summed, this is followed by sorting on the activity and design a subsummary report via a wizzard with grouping of data. You then during the design process remove the "body" part so only the subsummary and the label exists.

But this is pretty basic knowledge in the understanding the way filemaker deals with summaries, so before digging deeper in my convoluted lingo disgracing effords - read this:

http://www.dwaynewright.com/afa/articles/afa1104.html

...and this... ...although it's been around for say 12 years!

In year 2000 had Maria langer a great article in Advisor on this topic ...if you can lay your hands on it?

However is this method designed to whatever size/measure of data you throw at it, here is the summary field to use a Count to get the number of "removed bodies"

When you have this working could you just go to the newly made layout in browsemode and issue "Show All Records" next make a more fledged sort, first on the persons ID or Name if thats unique and then on the activity name before going into preview mode.

--sd

[bpal]

Yup I'm even more lost now :S

From what I can tell this is good when you have one field to Sum. I have a posibeal 150 if not more I need summed at one time. Is there something else out there that will be easier??

[Søren Dyhr]

I have a posibeal 150 if not more I need summed at one time. Is there something else out there that will be easier??

Ah! you're strugling with a sheet'ish metaphor, but when you think about are we all used to abstractions take money ...how is it we think that money buys everything? ...an abstraction, because when you look at it, is it just a sheet of paper we think a value into because it have number on display.

What if we for statistical purposes pull in the coloum name and the value into our summary, that require 2 fields to work...

I have a posibeal 150 if not more I need summed at one time.

...use the coloumname as breaker value and the actual value from the the field.

Perhaps this video could bring you closer to grasping that you have to teach your system to get a display in coloums but deal with your data in efficient manner behind the screens:

http://previews.filemakermagazine.com/videos/513/DataTagging_full.mov

--sd