Portal interface with Multi-user file

[spoonman]

I'm a teacher who has been setting up FM databases for about 10 years, but I've had zero formal training, so I may have just missed something basic. I work with 4 other teachers and we comprise a team. Each quarter, our students complete a project that counts as 1 grade but is made up of 5 parts, graded by the five subject teachers. I set up a simple database with the students' names, class and fields for the five scores and a field to sum them up. Since our students are divided into 5 classes, I set up an interface table with a global field with the choices for the classes (A, B, C, D, E) and related it to the table with the students. My colleagues click on a class and a list of the students in that class shows up in a portal with fields to fill in their scores. Simple and works great. But hosted on FM server, when more than 1 teacher is using the database, sometimes we get an error that another user is using this record and so only 1 teacher can use it at a time. I understand that the interface is on a single record, but it seems like this should work anyway. And strangely, sometimes it works and sometimes not. Anyone have thoughts? Thanks very much for your time and input.

[IdealData]

Most likely the record is becoming locked when the portal is activated (even scrolling) by another user.

Why not use a different record for each teacher? The global relationship will still work fine.

[spoonman]

Thanks for responding. The teachers all log in with the same account. How do I make sure a person uses a particular record?

Any idea why my issue only happens sometimes?

Thanks again for the help.

[spoonman]

I also posted this in the Portal forum:

I'm a teacher who has been setting up FM databases for about 10 years, but I've had zero formal training, so I may have just missed something basic. I work with 4 other teachers and we comprise a team. Each quarter, our students complete a project that counts as 1 grade but is made up of 5 parts, graded by the five subject teachers. I set up a simple database with the students' names, class and fields for the five scores and a field to sum them up. Since our students are divided into 5 classes, I set up an interface table with a global field with the choices for the classes (A, B, C, D, E) and related it to the table with the students. My colleagues click on a class and a list of the students in that class shows up in a portal with fields to fill in their scores. Simple and works great. But hosted on FM server, when more than 1 teacher is using the database, sometimes we get an error that another user is using this record and so only 1 teacher can use it at a time. I understand that the interface is on a single record, but it seems like this should work anyway. And strangely, sometimes it works and sometimes not. Anyone have thoughts? Thanks very much for your time and input.

[Colin Keefe]

It's definitely a record-locking issue; when a user selects a portal row, not just the portal row gets locked, the parent record (your interface table record) gets locked too.

One method for addressing this is to run an open script that assigns each user their own interface record. The open script would:

perform a find in the interface table for a record where interfacetable::accountname = Get(AccountName)

if none are found, create a new interface record with that user's account name in interfacetable::accountname.

Set the Open Script in File Options to point to your new script, and you should be set.

The end result of this would be 1 interface record for each user, so no record locking would occur at the parent interface record level.

[comment]

This is a duplicate thread:

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/192627/

[Lee Smith]

I have merged the two topics and sent a PT to spoonman about double posting.

Lee