Indexing Limitations

[larrylens]

In FM 5.0, is there still a limitation on text-based relational keys of no more than 20 characters?

One of my relationships is creating odd results that could be explained by this limitation. Can anyone confirm this, and possibly provide a workaround? I have some fairly long compound keys that I'd like to use.

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

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Originally posted by Chuck:

From FileMaker's online help:

"FileMaker Pro looks at the first 20 characters of each word in the field, up to 60 characters (including spaces)."

So, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTA" and "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTB" create the same index entries. However, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST A" and "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST B" create different index entries. Keys can't be longer than 60 characters total, and each "word" can't be longer than 20 characters.

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Another thing to watch out for is that FMP will STOP indexing after it hits one of these limits. So if you have a multi-line key, and any of the words is longer than 20 characters or the lines is longer than 60 characters it will stop indexing the record at that point.

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Kurt Knippel

Consultant

Database Resources

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.database-resources.com

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[Chuck]

From FileMaker's online help:

"FileMaker Pro looks at the first 20 characters of each word in the field, up to 60 characters (including spaces)."

So, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTA" and "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTB" create the same index entries. However, "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST A" and "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRST B" create different index entries. Keys can't be longer than 60 characters total, and each "word" can't be longer than 20 characters.

Chuck