real trouble working with relationships

[Hack]

Hi

I have been away from the forum for some time, but have got a little further with filemaker, I am having some real trouble trying to work relationships. I am trying to navigate around my job tracking database for a one person graphic design firm.

I am having trouble getting from my project layout to other layouts. I have the relationship working on the whole across the database but it seems to be working badly. When I try to create a script button to link from a portal table to the related data on the portal this doesn't work. I have managed to do it in other parts of the database but when it comes to linking out and from the project layout I am having great difficulty which is a main stumbling block for me developing the functionality on the database.

What I think I have to do is rebuild the relationship area in the Data base as this is a mess, but I am not sure how to rebuild this with rebuilding the whole of the data base......as I have tried in the pass but I have try to reconnect all the loss connection in the data base

I also don't know how many connections I need access the data base i.e Client_ID or Company_Name or Job Ref Number..... To create relationship through the database..... Very confused about this area.... which I think the main problem I have.....

Please see the attached clone of the site.

I would really appreciate anyone's input on this.

Cheers Damian

print_specs_Clone-v3.fp7.zip

[Søren Dyhr]

OK at first sight does it seem like you using fatter chords than nessersary...

I need to know how many companies share one single client ID?? A lot of linking is made on both the ID as well as the company name, there are no need to use the relational keys to sneak tunnel over to the related records any more, as soon as the relation is valid is the field drag-able into the layout.

Where it gets tricky, is when you need to separate querry from structure via extra TO's

--sd

[Fenton]

Yes, that's kind of a weird relationship graph. It looks kind of like "anchor-buoy", but it is messy. I can see why you're having trouble with navigation.

Basically, you need, at the least, an anchor TO for each main "entity" (thing) of your solution. Those would be put on the left. There would usually only be 1 for that entity in that position. Each entity would, of course, appear multiple times on the graph, but not a whole bunch of times as an anchor. Doing that makes a confusing mess.

I see however that you didn't even use most of those extra ones. So I deleted them. And I rearranged those tied to layouts as proper anchors. I renamed them, according my convention; which is similar to accepted methods, but perhaps not as "correct." But you must have some way to distinguish table occurrence groups (TOG), at a glance, and know which is the base table of the table occurrence. I tend to abbreviate long names.

There is still quite a bit of confusion about relationships. Especially about how to use FileMaker auto-entered serial IDs. It is not safe to use something like "Company Name" in a relationship (except temporarily). In this case it simply makes no sense; you already have a ClientID (though it was not auto-entered).

I've done some of it. But it is not done. Ambiguity or sloppiness in relationships will get you in the end. One misspelling and you can no longer find your client's print records.

I'm not trying to be overly critical. There is a lot right in the solution. It appears you have a good concept of what relationships are and how to use them.

(P.S. I'm also not crazy about Person1, Person2, ...; Quantity1, Quantity2, .... These should likely be separate little tables. It is difficult and tedious to deal with the "multiple fields for the same thing" (I don't know the correct database term for this; but it is a well-known design problem).)

print_specs_Clone_fej.zip

Edited July 8, 2006 by Guest

[Hack]

Hi Fenton

The feed that you gave me was fantastic (like I was jumping around my office) it has really give me great understand of the way relationship are working. I just need to spend some time working through the feed back you gave me, the amended FH-Pro file that you amended was really great as gave good visual understand of the was relationship work

What I did was, using screen dump of the relation graph that you did and amended an copy of my file (help me see what you did), the only problem was that I am coming up with problems with broken link etc... May be better to start a fresh with the whole data base and rebuild it from the start.... But seem like a lot of work

Thanks again

Cheers

Damian

Edited July 11, 2006 by Guest

[Hack]

Hi Fenton

I am trouble with when I rebuild the relationship table , basicly I have reconnected all broken field in the database. I presume when you redid my relationship table you did not have go through the whole database and reconnect the broken felds and asign then the right table

Cheers

Damian

[Hack]

Hi Fenton

I have reset up the relationship table I think I getting them to work a lot better, but I am having a lot trouble with my "job intruction layout", in this layout I have items and amendments that only need relate to one "job instruction ID" as you can see with the attached file they are not showing, I idea why they would not be showing

they sort of are showing with the itesm but the tabel does not show when I create an new job instruction record

Kind regards

Damian

print_specs_Clone-v5.fp7.zip