Hi all,

I have been staring at this too long and can not quite figure out if it works or not yet. An outside view would be very handy.

Problem:

I want to combine multiple sets of a multiple number of elements such that each new set will always contain at least one element from each of the old sets, and each element from an old set will have at least one instance in a new set where it is the only element present from the old set.

Ok, how about a (semi)practical context:

I want to be able to return multiple multi-criteria sets in a portal at the same time. Say, all Female customers from New Haven and all Web customers from New York. However, I do not know the size of number of the sets beforehand. I know that a different field will be needed for each element of a set, so am already limited by the number of fields that I want to pre-create (In the above example, they would be linked to a Customer Multikey that has Gender, City, State, and Store Location as values).

I designed the attached repeating field method to work with up to 8 elements total, but should work for more as well. The problem is that I am not as comfortable on my combinatorial math as I would like to be - can anyone spot a scenario where it will fail?

Fields:

Set 1-8 (Text)

Filter 1-8 (Stored Calc)

Let(

    [

        current = 1;

        firstend = Count( Set 1 );

        secondend = firstend + Count( Set 2 );

        thirdend = secondend + Count( Set 3 );

        fourthend = thirdend + Count( Set 4 );

        fifthend = fourthend + Count( Set 5 );

        sixthend = fifthend + Count( Set 6 );

        seventhend = sixthend + Count( Set 7 );

        eighthend = seventhend + Count( Set 3 );

        list = firstend & "¶" & secondend & "¶" & thirdend& "¶" &fourthend& "¶" &fifthend& "¶" &sixthend& "¶" &seventhend& "¶" &eighthend;

        rep = Get( CalculationRepetitionNumber )

    ];

    Case(

        rep = 1;

        Case(

            GetValue( list; rep ) >= current;

            Evaluate( "Set " & rep & "[" & current & "]" );

            Evaluate("Set "&rep&"["&Quote(Mod( current; Evaluate( "Count(Set " & rep & ")" ) ) + 1)&"]")

        );

        GetValue( list; rep ) > GetValue( list; rep - 1 );

        Case(

            GetValue( list; rep ) >= current and current > GetValue( list; rep - 1 );

            Evaluate( "Set " & rep & "[" & current - GetValue( list; rep - 1 ) & "]" );

            Evaluate("Set "&rep&"["&Quote(Mod( current; Evaluate( "Count(Set " & rep & ")" ) ) + 1)&"]")

        )

    )

)

'current' is the only thing that is changed with each filter:

Filter 1: current=1

Filter 2: current=2...

Thanks,

-Raz

Combine.fp7.zip

Nevermind-

I just realized that this could be done much easier via each set as a child filter record of a master filter view.

Also- typo above,

eighthend should read:

eighthend = seventhend + Count( Set 8 );