Related fields from Bento to FileMaker Pro 9

[KiwiCoral]

Hi. I'm a total FileMaker newbie and I'm moving data from Bento. Is there any way to set up related fields in FileMaker to be similar to Bento?

For example I have a list of client records and events they have attended. The events record shows the list of related clients that attended the event. What's the best way to do this in FileMaker?

Thanks in advance!

[bcooney]

Wow! I think that you're the first "upgrading from Bento" post I've seen. Here they come guys, lol.

Anyway, you have a many-to-many relationship. That is, a Client can attend many Events and an Event can consist of many Clients in attendance.

So, you need three tables. The third is called a join table, in that it joins the two main entity tables and resolves the many-to-many into two one-to-manies.

Clients

__kP_ClientID (primary key Clients, auto-entered serial number, not modifiable)

Name

Events

__kP_EventID (primary key Events, auto-entered serial number, not modifiable)

Date_Start

Date_End

EventName

ClientEvents

__kP_ClientEventID

_kF_ClientID (Client foreign key)

_kF_EventID (Event foreign key)

(this is the join table you could name it something more meaningful, perhaps Registration). See how it records the unique combos of a client and event by storing their keys?

Now, on a layout based on a Client table occurrence, you can have a portal to ClientEvents by ClientID and you'll see all the "child" events that a client attended.

Similarly, on an Event layout, you could have a portal to ClientEvents by EventID that shows all the Clients who've attended this Event.

hth,

Barbara

[KiwiCoral]

Hi,

Thanks very much for the table info. I have the tables set up (I think), but have a dumb question.... How do I choose which events and which clients go together?

Thanks in advance!