Pop Up List From Unrelated Table

[shinjiikari0601]

Hello all,

Sorry to bother you all once again with my neophyte questions, but I have another...

In my database, most of my tables are related... There are a couple, however, that I have left unrelated, since they need to be related to multiple tables (and FM tells me it cant do that and needs to add another copy of the table or some such)...

Basically, here's all I want to do... The tables are, for instance, lookup_states and lookup_countries... These tables look like this:

lookup_states

-------------

id (auto generated, serial number)

state_name (text)

state_abbreviation (text)

lookup_countries

----------------

id (auto generated, serial number)

country_name (text)

country_abbreviation (text)

In several of the layouts I have, you enter the address of the customer, company, and site... There are three tables, customer_info, company_info and site_info that retain these records...

All I want to do is have a pop up or drop down menu that displays the state name, and allows me to insert the state abbreviation into the proper field in each database.

"In PHP and MySQL" (my infamous words), I would just make a select box in html, with the value set to the abbreviation and the text set to the full name... Two queries, two arrays, and a little For loop to combine them all into the proper HTML...

I know that there must be a relationship between tables to reterieve data from said tables... However, if one table, like a lookup table, is going to contain pretty much static data, and be used in multiple other tables, is there ANY way to get this data into my layouts?

Or is "there must be a relationship" the final word..?

I don't even really need a relationship... I just want it to look up the state names and abbreviations (and country same things), and display them in a drop down/pop up/whatever. No foreign keys. No id's. Just a lookup...

Thanks,

Brad

P.S. - From the wording of the dialog box, I assume that it's just adding a new graphic of the table into the relationships graph... While that isn't the worst thing in the world, I guess, it's just not what I expected...

[LaRetta]

I don't even really need a relationship... I just want it to look up the state names and abbreviations (and country same things), and display them in a drop down/pop up/whatever. No foreign keys. No id's. Just a lookup...

If all you want is a dropdown or popup list from a States table, then simply create a value list based upon it (and select 'all values'); no relationships are required at all.

LaRetta :wink2:

[Søren Dyhr]

Or is "there must be a relationship" the final word..?

No - but why is the thought in itself preposterous? Lookups does in filemaker build upon relations. It's quite surprising how often something is wished to be achieved via unrelated tables, why is it comming up so often?

However is sometimes as interesting as solving sudukos or crosswords to solve such matters counter productive, as a challenge. The effort put into it ... does unfortunately not justify the riddance of relations as approach. Promise me that you soon will get the hang of it!

I attach my suduko....

--sd

StateAbrev.zip