Global & Unstored Functionality

[Amram Chayim Eirinberg]

Hi all,

I have table1 and I would like to be able to see all of the records of table1 from all other tables in my database.

Here is the tricky bit: I want to accomplish this without needing to establish a relationship between table1 and each of the other tables.

My approach was that in table1 I created a calculated global field (gListItems) that returns the values of all the related records from a self joined relationship (using the List function).

(Global fields can be viewed in any table without a relationship)

My problem is that when I show this field in the other tables or even in the native table (table1) the field only returns the value of 1 record.

(If I make the field not global then it does return a list of all values as expected)

Any help will be very much appreciated

Amram Chayim Eirinberg

[jdu98a]

I'm not an expert on the fine details of the Filemaker engine and how it deals with all it expressions, but as far as your issue, think what your asking Filemaker to do. With your global field and self joining relationship you are asking to see a single return showing all the related records of all the records in your table. Even though the resulting list 'should' be the same for every record, Filemaker still has to recalculate each time. So it is not able to give you a single global answer. It appears that in this case FM defaults to just showing the single record. When the field is set to "not" global each record is then free to calculate its own result and the correct information is shown.

All that aside, what is your reasoning for choosing to not use relationships to your other tables?

[Amram Chayim Eirinberg]

Thanks jdu98a,

Sorry for not coming back sooner.

What you say makes a lot of sense from previous experience.

The reason I wanted to achieve this without relationships, is simple because I wanted this related information to "show" in EVERY table in the database system, now of course I could make a relationship with each table (btw that's exactly what I ended up doing), but I just thought that if I can rely on a global field than maintanance of the database will be easier and if I add a new table I wouldn't need to remember to make a new relationship.

To give you a better idea of why I need the data of all the records in that table , to put it short I have a script that uses the OnTimer step every 120 seconds and goes through these data hence I want these data "visible" all the time regardless of which table the user happens to be in.