The new portal filter feature is interesting and apparently a little controversial. Like FileMaker itself, and many other features within FileMaker, (think repeating fields for example) the feature may be quite valuable but should be used with an understanding of its limitations.

For instance, we could just simplify our graph greatly. Create a Session table, create an X-relation from that table to every other table in the database, and use a filter Evaluate( $$filter).

Probably not a good idea. But beyond that - what will the best uses be for filtered portals?

What about combinations of standard and filtered portals? For instance, imagine the use of standard filters where we have an ID list on the "left" side of the relation. It could be augmented by collecting those ID values from a filtered portal based on a very flexible filter method.

Couple things you can't do with graph-based portal filtering:

1. Filter on empty values. But you CAN do this with a filtered portal. So you could for instance find all records where productID is empty.

2. In-record comparison calcs. Example, all records where wholesale price > retail price. Gotta fix those!

Item 1 could be done with a non-portal standard form or list view find operation. But I'm not aware of easy ways to do item 2.