How to export records independent of found sets

[sal88]

Hi all, I believe this may be a question directly linked to the fundamental concepts regarding the relationship graph, which anyone dealing with FM should, I'm guessing, know, but as I am technically speaking a newbie I must ask.

Let's say I have an appointments table, with each appointment record having a 'Contract_ID' field which is linked to a 'Contracts' table.

And then I have an 'appointments data' layout which is linked to patient data, clinic data etc. This layout is used purely for the user to browse and find.

Now I want to export any unexported appointments, for each contract. But I ideally don't want it to interfere with any current found sets in the 'appointments data'.

Do I therefore have to create a whole bunch of other table occurences, which basically mirrors what I have already done, and then export from there? (an export based on scripts that asks which contract you want to export etc).

Or should I just get the user to perform manual searches on the appointments data layout and then export from there?

Or should I use the 'save find' function?

Or have I got the wrong end of the stick entirely?

Would be great to know the philosophy behind the right way, this is something I think I have been doing wrong for some time now.

Many thanks