You guys might think I'm dumb, and you'll probably be right. It feels like I'm missing something obvious here.

On one particular layout, I have a subsummary part that shows up when sorted by clients. This layout is used for shipping. It would be tremendously helpful if I could calculate how many separate subsummaries are present in a given found set, so the user could pull down as many boxes as there are clients in a given shipping list. This seems like it should be a simple thing to do but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Do I use a trailing grand summary? How do I configure this subsummary summary field?

If somebody can point me in the right direction I would be most grateful!

This seems like it should be a simple thing to do

Not quite:

http://fmforums.com/forum/showpost.php?post/297916/

hm. not nearly as straightforward as I feared it would be. thanks, comment!

Edited May 8, 201015 yr by Guest

I've been working on implementing this, and trying to expand on it. I'm running into some bizarre circumstances.

First to repost the three fields proposed from this other thread...

1. sCountSerialID, Summary = Count of SerialID (or any field that's never empty);

2. cInverseCount, Calculation = 1 / GetSummary ( sCountSerialID ; EmployeeID )

3. sCountEmployees, Summary = Total of cInverseCount

I more or less understand the logic of what's going on here. I got this to work for a particular field. But, I have more than one field where I need to acquire the number of unique values in the found set...I decide all I need to do is recreate fields 2 and 3, but pertinent to the next field that I need this value for.

this doesn't work. I don't know why I would need one, but I create distinct fields in each case for field 1...this doesn't work. more importantly, unique value counts stop working for both sets of calculations. I delete the second set of calculations...now the first set works again...

it seems i've gone into uncharted territory. I don't understand this behavior at all. Is there some reason why these different sets of calculations shouldn't work independently when their respective field is being sorted?

In addition to this, I tried a number of different settings on the summary fields, making them a running total, running with restart, etc, because I have little experience with summary fields. As it works now, my field equivalent to 3 above is a summary, running with restart when sorted by the field in question. This is what seems to consistently work, as in, I sort by that field, I get a unique value count, I sort by something else, it goes away. But again, this breaks as soon as I try to add this other set of fields. Weird. Any idea what's going on here?

Could you explain what are you trying to achieve - perhaps post a simple demo file?

The problem gets weirder. I threw together an example file to demonstrate the problem, but instead I've demonstrated success. Everything works as I had originally expected in this file. You sort by investigator, you get a tally of unique values in investigator. You sort by fluorophore, you get a tally of unique values there.

I've gone over the field definitions in our solution again and again, and they are exactly the same formulas as in the sample file. But in our solution, when you sort by the alternate field, the unique value tally for the new sort doesn't calculate...unless you duplicate the window. But not upon the actual sort. The data viewer shows the same thing...the final summary field doesn't calculate until you duplicate the window, then it appears.

I have attached the example file I created for posterity. In a nutshell, each line in our shipping list is associated with a fluorophore and an investigator. Knowing the number of unique values in each of these fields in a found set would be very useful information to the techs that use the database. this sample file handles the counting of them fine. But the question remains...what could be the cause of our solution not refreshing these values upon sorting?

sample_unique_values.fp7.zip

Edited May 10, 201015 yr by Guest
fixed attachment