Omitting an entire found set

[Drew Clark]

I'm having this need come up more and more...I have a user that finds a set of records, and then I need to find ANOTHER set of records that omits content from a field of the original found set.

For example...

Fields:

Name

Address

City

State

School

Hobbies

I do a find for everyone that has a CITY of Columbus...I get 45 records back.

Now, I need to query the DB again - new find, and omit the school name from each of the 45 records...so FIND R1->Hobbies=Music, FIND R2->OMIT School from found set 1, record 1, FIND R3->OMIT School from found set 1, record 2, etc.

I can't wrap my mind on how to script this out - and surely don't see anyway to do this straight up through the UI.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

[mz123]

Could you Create a script that shows the omitted records only, hiding the original found set of COLUMBUS?

Show Omitted Only

Enter Find Mode [Pause]

[user enters criteria here and clicks "Continue"]

Constrain Found Set

[Drew Clark]

I'm not sure that what accomplish it exactly. I need to basically take all the different school fields, and do a find with 45 requests using the schools that were found in the orginal find. Almost be the same as having a text file with criteria on each line, and being able to import that and have it do 45 requests based on what's in the text file, instead of manually keying in each request.

[comment]

Can you explain what is it that you are actually trying to achieve?

[Drew Clark]

We have a complex solution that basically associates a contact record with a school district. Each district has many contact records associated with it. Each contact record has a field (actually a portal to a relative table) of job titles that apply to that person. So, we would search the contacts layout for anyone on X committee, with Y title..and find 300 of them, one per district (since only person per district is on that committee), meaning 300 districts out of 720.

Now, I want to do another find, basically, for Z title, omitting the 300 districts that were found in the first find, without having to key them all in and omit them when I do a find for Z title. I'm trying to export the email addresses for all of Z title in districts that do NOT have someone on X committee.

Thanks for your help!

Edited February 12, 2009 by Guest

[comment]

I am afraid that's a bit too condensed for me to understand. In general, I think you may find it more efficient here to use GTRR (or a series of GTRR), rather than Find.

For example, given a structure of:

Contacts -< Roles >- Committees >- Districts

To find Education Committees that do not have a Chairman:

1. Find roles of type "Chairman";

2. GTRR [ Committees; Match found set ]

3. Show Omitted Only

4. Constrain found set to committees of type "Education";

To find the Secretaries of the above set:

5. GTRR [ Roles; Match found set ]

6. Constrain found set to roles of type "Secretary";

7. GTRR [ Contacts; Match found set ]

[Drew Clark]

Thanks - I'll play around with this a bit.