Does a Filtered Portal white paper exist?

[Baylah]

Hi Group,

I have never had the need to use filtered portals and have consequently never taught myself the technique. Does anyone have a white paper that explains how, why and where filtered portals are best used? Does anyone have a small sample file that demonstrates how filtered portals work?

I am working on my most ambitious project yet and I think a filtered portal (by the function the name implies) will help me display a set of data that would be difficult to display otherwise.

Any help would really be appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

[mr_vodka]

I believe that this thread should get you started with some ideas.

http://fmforums.com/forum/showtopic.php?tid/188956

[Baylah]

Thanks Vodka! Do you have a mini solution that demonstrates this techniqe?

Mr. Vodka Writes: <>

I don't understand what you mean by "stop serving"

Steve

Edited September 26, 2008 by Guest

[mr_vodka]

Well that was in particular to that post. Global fields that are served will retain their value of what it was at the point that it was stand alone.

Here is a basic setup of a simple filtered portal.

Lets say you have a relationship keyed as such:

Customer table

pkCustomerID

gStatus

Invoice table (portal)

fkCustomerID

Status

Now on the Customer layout you can have a portal that displays all the related Invoices if you just key on the CustomerIDs. However, if you use s global field on the parent side and match the key to the Status field on the Invoice table occurence you can filter by changing the value of the global field to some value that you use for status such as "Paid" or "Open".

When you change it, it will only display the ones that match as Paid or Open.

[Fitch]

Global fields that are served will retain their value of what it was at the point that it was stand alone.

I recently became aware that with FM Server 9, a server-side script that modifies a global value will cause that value to be retained. Good technique to know if you need to modify a global without taking the solution offline.

Re: filtered portals, it's good to know how they work, but I try to avoid them whenever possible. Lists are just so much easier to work with.

[mr_vodka]

I recently became aware that with FM Server 9, a server-side script that modifies a global value will cause that value to be retained. Good technique to know if you need to modify a global without taking the solution offline.

Very interesting find Tom. I am going to have to test this. However, when stopping and reserving the files I wonder if they will retain their ORIG values instead of the changed values via the server side script. My guess would be yes but again I will have to test this on Monday.