Update all records in a portal

[EllenG]

Is there a way to do a Replace function that will update all records in a portal, without having to loop through the portal rows?

I have an ancestry/progeny relationship going 5-deep (5 generations) that build on each other with a parent-child relationship from the prior generation. It uses a list calculation to match to.

The portals work great, but now I need to run a report (by animal) with all associated progeny, including the relationship (son, daughter, grandson.. etc.)

I figured out that I can do this in a script by setting a field in the Ancestry table and then selecting that field to retrieve all the records that were set. However, the only way I can think to do this is to loop through each portal with a "set field" command for each row.

This is an animal database, and there can be hundreds of progeny for a given animal, especially the sires!!

Can I do a global Replace for all portal rows or is there even a faster way to select all the related animals??

Thanks.