Database for a dating service

[La Juana]

(Originally posted in the wrong topic)

Hi everyone! I am very new to participating on this forum, but have been a voyeur for a while, and have gotten a lot of good information, but I am still a beginner in FM)

I am creating a database for a dating service. I currently have one table, it includes MemberID, MemberEmail and profile information (Most of which pulls from value lists).

My question has two parts.

1. I need to keep track of the dates that the members are sent on. One person can have many dates with different people. If I enter date information (time, place, comments) for one person and add the member they dated, I would like the same date place, time etc. entered as a date record for the second person. I shouldn't have to enter it twice (once for each person on the date). I don't even know where to begin on this one. If I add a table called dates, there would need to be two MemberID fields right? I'm a little lost.

2. I would like to be able to have filemaker make matches automatically based on the member's preferences. I have figured that I can make scripts for each member with their preferences, but I was wondering if there is an easier way?

Thanks in advance for your help. Please let me know if I need to provide any other information.

La Juana

[jamesducker]

Posting this in the 'relationships' forum seems very appropriate ;-)

Yes, make a second table called dates, with fields for date, time, place, etc. It should contain two member IDs, called "hisID" and "herID", or whatever.

You need a relationship from "hisID" in dates to "memberID" in members. You also need a relationship from "herID" in dates to "memberID" in members. These relationships would allow you to display on your 'dates' layout details of the two members attending. You could also use them to compare information about the two members, such as work out their age difference.

You will probably also want to display on your 'members' layout a list of all the dates a person has been on. BUT you don't particularly want to have two lists, one for the boys and one for the girls, so I would suggest that in the 'dates' table you also create a calculation field called "bothIDs" within dates, defined as

hisID & "¶" & herID

Then you should create a relationship called "dates for this member" from 'memberID' in the members table to 'bothIDs' in the 'dates' table. Show this as a portal on the members and you will see a list of all the dates the member has been on; you could also display the name of the other member and add a button to the portal allowing you to click through to that member, etc.



You could then define another calculation field on 'members' as 

count(dates for this member::bothIDs)

- this will count up the number of dates the member has been on. And so on...

As for matching people up with like-minded souls, don't write scripts for each member... you'd be better off with a 'self-join' relationship (from the 'members' table to itself) which looked for people with similar preferences. It's not completely straightforward as you wouldn't always want exact matches, so you'd need to think about exactly what was wanted first. For instance, you wouldn't match "member sex" to "member sex" (unless your membership was entirely homosexual)... you'd need to match "sex this member is looking for" field to "sex of this member".

If you want more help with that (the matching-dates bit, not the sex bit), just ask.

[La Juana]

Thanks for the quick response! I will start working on the dates piece first. I will keep this post updated with my progress.

I really appreciate it!

La Juana

[jamesducker]

Not a problem, good luck and keep us informed :-)

[La Juana]

Hi James,

Can I just tell you that you're a rock star?! Thanks to you, I got the dates piece to work. I couldn't quite figure out the button on the portal to the corresponding person, but that's just a "nice to have".

You're a wonderful, wonderful man!, Thanks so much!! :

La Juana