Newbies whillwpg Posted December 12, 2000 Newbies Share Posted December 12, 2000 I have a database of 61,000 records of old photographs where users search on fields called "subject" (a repeating field of up to 10 entries) and "Description", a text field of up to fifty or so words. When searching for subject "hockey" and description "bobby orr", the correct two records are found in just a couple of seconds, but if it is only description "orr", the system whirrs for five minutes then filemaker quits with "error type 2" and the whole system (MAC G4) must be rebooted. It appears Filemaker is searching the Subject field for all records and then the Description field for all records, not just the found set for Subject. Is there any way to control this? It does NOT happen when we use Filemaker directly (i.e. not using Web Companion) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vaughan Posted December 12, 2000 Share Posted December 12, 2000 Oh oh oh I get to be first... before Kurt and LiveOak (tee hee) <coughs> <straightens shirt> <puts on stern headmaster-ish voice> Don't use repeating fields. Repeating fields are the work of the Devil. They'll make your car battery go flat, your credit cards will all demagnetise and Reader's Digest will start including you in their sweepstakes. I know, it happened to me. Repeating fields will be the cause of your video player chewing up your tapes. They'll make you forget all your passwords, you'll lock yourself out of your house, make your toilet clog up. I know because it happend to me. Repeating fields will make your clothes drier break down at exactly the same time you run out of fabric softwner, so after you're forced to dry your towels outside on the clothes line they'll be all hard and scratchy. I know because it happened to me. Repeating fields are the cause of all world disharmony. They cause acid rain and have been linked to the hole in the ozone layer. They are bad. I know. All these things happened to me and I just *read* about repeating fields, not even acutally used them, not even in FMP 2 and earlier when they were useful before relational was introduced in FMP3. Rrelational offers "similar" functionality to repeating fields without any of the drawbacks -- repeating fields cannot be used in searches (well only the first row is, none of the others are) and repeating fields are limited inthe number of rows they have. Portals -- a feature of related databases -- offers a similar interface but can have an unlimited number of rows, each one can be searched and manipulated indifidually. The good news: there is still time! Repent now, sinner! Before these really nasty things start to happen to YOU denounce repeating fields! Redesign your data structure to include related records instead of the repeating fields. You'll find their flexibility to more than compensate for the effort. Ahmen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newbies whillwpg Posted December 13, 2000 Author Newbies Share Posted December 13, 2000 Vaughan, thanks a bunch. I know that relational is best, but this works so simply and easily over an internal network (but not under Web Publishing). It would of course be a heck of a lot of work to change everything now. Do you have any other suggestions on why Web Publishing doesn't search the same way as a direct Search in FMP5? Any way to select the result of the Subject search and then only look in its Descriptions for a text match? By the way, the site is at www.photoindex.org and then click on "archives" Wally Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kraftyman Posted December 13, 2000 Share Posted December 13, 2000 Methinks Vaughan might have a future in the entertainment industry... Nice diatribe about the repeating fields. In my workplace we have a clinical database with about 40 ( no typo!) repeating fields which has essentially crippled it. A major re-write is looming. Has anybody heard anything from Filemaker about when they plan to get rid of this resident evil in FMP? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newbies whillwpg Posted December 13, 2000 Author Newbies Share Posted December 13, 2000 This is very strange. Today, our database seems to work perfectly. After a couple of longish searches using a Subject and progressively smaller Descriptions, suddenly we are getting almost instantaneous response on all searches. The query on subject "hockey" and description "orr" (15 hits) executes immediateley, and so does "buildings" with "fire" (1260 hits), etc. Would this phenonmenon have anything to do with FM5 building field indexes? Does anyone know how this beast works? Any literature out there that explains how it works under the covers? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anatoli Posted December 14, 2000 Share Posted December 14, 2000 If searched on not-indexed field, the FM will first index the field, but not always. It is good practice to index all fields, where you will allow search. Vaughan Rules! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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