Am I missing something?

[Spurpurajr]

hi All,

I am new to filemaker but, I have worked with as a developer for more than 28 years. I have a filemaker database with lots of relationships but for some reason I can not figure out how to make a layout that will allow more than one table for instance a layout with a table and its child records.

For instance a Customer and Addresses. I have included the Database file in this post so that someone can point me in the right direction.

Thank you for all your help,

spurpurajr

SCP_Solutionsfp7.zip

[Søren Dyhr]

Portals are the name of the game!

But perhaps you, or rather you need to consult this:

http://www.digfm.org/ref/FM7_key_concepts.pdf

Because the RG isn't an ERD!!

--sd

[Spurpurajr]

Thank you Søren Dyhr,

I understand what you are saying but, I feel if I consult this out then I am not learning what I need to learn. The reason to do this project is because I need the database but to also learn Filemaker. I understand that you are saying about TO not equaling tables but I just assumed that filemaker was a relational database so it worked the same as all relational databases. Do you happen to know a good book?

Do you think at least I setup the structure correctly? If that is ok then I have the base and I can try to figure the rest out.

Thank you for any help,

spurpurajr

[mr_vodka]

I would definately take a look at the PDF that Søren pointed out to. Also you may want to check out the whitepaper that is referenced in my signature.

Finally, here post with a list of training material and books.

http://www.fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/285822/

[Søren Dyhr]

When the mission statement is absent, is it utterly difficult to speak of how well the relational structure might be

Butl I've paid a slight more attention to your approach, what you need to learn is that when setting up relations is there an option to "...allow creation of" related records, the thing is that all your related tables have almost the same flow in field contents, which might be an indication that the normalization not quite is there yet, entity duplications is perhaps allowed in the strictest Boice/Codd interpretation.

Please note that filemaker as tool opposed to SQL'ed solutions won't be squeamishly concerned with dealing with null values.

There's absolutely no need to validate on autoenter values and when the "...allow creation" is chosen is the the entire record generation as well as the assignment of foreignkey to the child records automated upon the users interaction - Nothing needs actual scripting or validation when it's about the keyfields.

To deal with you more or less carbon copied table structures, should you perhaps read David Kachels whitepaper for novices, which for the moment can't be downloaded, but here's the link:

http://www.foundationdbs.com/

But he writes about a method called "tired tables"... If it doesn't come up in the near future, let me produce a template showing the approach.

--sd

[FestiveEmbalmer]

It looks like you have your solution pretty well done apart from actually making layouts. The short answer to your original question is as Søren said, Portals.

Portals are filemaker's method for displaying related records on a layout.

I did notice that all your relationships are single criteria equijoins. There is no problem with that, but understanding filemaker's different joins will allow you to leverage a lot of your experience in terms of functionality. In addition to building your db structure, you can also create relationships that are like permanent queries. For example, you can create a display of all the other customers in the DB on a customer layout by creating a nonequijoin relationship between the customerIDs (a self-join actually). They can all be displayed and accessed from a portal.

Using global fields you can extend this to filter by Start & end dates, ranged values or even complex multicriteria relationships.

I highly recommend the book "Special Edition Using Filemaker 9". If you're bread and butter is IT, than I even highlier recommend a subscription to the O'Reilly Safari library since it has that book as well as many others and some FM video instruction as well.

peace,

matthew