portal help

[SM76]

Morning, I'm trying to create a database that manages products for sale. The basic setup is very simple. Each product has a unique part number, a manufacturer, a little description, a price and a photo. I would like to be able to search the product database based on the manufacturer and / or the part number.

Here's the thing, when I create my layout with a list view, it all works fine. I do not like the list-view look however (the horizontal lines that divide the different parts (header, body, footer) and I also don't like the scroll bar on the side of the window.

So, I decided to try to use a portal instead, this way the scroll bar is well within my graphics (you know, the 'application') and it looks a lot tidier. However:

how do I need to set up my relationships to be able to:

1) see ALL products in the portal

2) search for either a manufacturer

3) or a part number

4) or a combo of manufacturer and part number

What I have achieved so far is that I can search for a manufacturer and it gives me all the products by that manufacturer. I can also search for a part number, but it gives me all the products of that manufacturer that that particular part number belongs to. I guess it's not hard to guess that my self-joining relationship points to manufacturer at this point.

Does anybody have a solution for this?

Hey, if you can tell me how to modify the list view, I'll take that too

cheers,

Mat

[SM76]

So, here's what I figured out. I created one table with the following fields: manufacturer, part number, description and price. I self-related manufacturer into itself (table 2) and self-related partnumber into itself (table 3). I then created three layouts. the main layout is where I input the search query. If the 'user' uses the manufacturer to search, he's taken to layout 2 that displays data from table 2. if partnumbers are used, it flips to layout three which displays data of table 3. Obviously always in portals so the actual layouts are pointing at table 1, the portal is pointing at 2 or 3 respectively. works like a charm, just not sure if it's the most elegant way of doing it!

Any other ideas? anyone? awefully quiet on here .. guess it is Sunday after all :)