Stupid Question...........

[Annette Marie]

Ok....stupid question i'm sure.....I'm trying to create a database and I'm new to FM and databases. I'm trying to look at some of the sample databases for help. While looking at the relationships in the Invoices database I was curious how the grey relationships were created since they aren't tables. For example LineItemsByBillingID. Because I want to do something like that and not sure how it was created.

[bruceR]

They are TOs - Table Occurrences.

Nothing on the graph "is" the underlying table.

Everything on the graph is a "shortcut" or "alias" to the table, and these are called "table occurrences" or "TO"s.

Just like with standard file-level shortcuts, you can give them different names and put them in different places. Just like with file-level shortcuts or aliases, removing the shortcut does not remove the original file. You can have a completely empty graph; but that does not mean the underlying tables have been deleted.

It's a very powerful concept but takes a bit to get your head around.

[Annette Marie]

Ok...well....everything you just said was like Greek to me! ha. I just can't figure this FM out.

I'm having a much more difficult time creating this database then I thought I would.

[comment]

In simple words: you can place the same table onto the relationships graph several times (though not with exactly the same name).

For example, you may have a relationship between Clients and Invoices, matching on ClientID. Now you want another relationship, showing only client's invoices in the current year. For this, you must use another occurrence of the Invoices table (which you would probably rename to "CurrentInvoices") and define a new relationship between it and Clients.