I have a table of companies and a field in that table for the number of patents that the company has received in recent years.

I want another field that calculates the rank of this particular company amongst companies in the table according to the number of patents it has received. i.e. the company with the most patents would be ranked 1, that with the second largest number of patents would be ranked 2, etc.

I would like the calculation to update when a new company is added to the table and to be available in a variety of layouts and contexts.

I figured that I could add a self-join relationship on the number of patents field with an inequality (i.e. to relate to all companies with patents greater than or equal to the patents of this company) and then use a count function; however, I was looking for a way that would not require me to add a new relationship, and hence would not be layout/context dependent.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

I was looking for a way that would not require me to add a new relationship, and hence would not be layout/context dependent.

I don't think you need to worry about that. The calculation will be evaluated from the context of the table set in the 'Specify Calculation' window, and it will return the same result in every layout.

Thank you.

I just implemented this and it works perfectly.

You have made my day.