Advice needed to create FM records in an external FM file

[Rich S]

Howdy, all, and happy holiday season.

I'm re-engineering an already-written solution so that all the data entered by a user is stored in an external FM file, instead of locally, to make upgrading the solution in the future easier for all concerned. So, I'm looking for a "best practices" way of doing this. Suggestions?

One problem I've run up against is creating a record in the host file which must create a new (related) record in the data file. Portaling everything isn't the answer, so what is a good way to handle this?

Creating summaries is another problem: am I stuck creating those in the data file since I can't designate an external file/relationship when setting up a Summary in the host file, or...?

TIA for your replies and help!

[Vaughan]

Create an external reference to the other file, then put a table occurrence of it in the relationships graph. Make a new layout based on this TO.

To create a new record in the external file, go to the layout based on its TO and make a new record. It's as easy as that.