tracking where I've been

[msadesign]

I'm creating a simple database of plant material, and as I work through the fields and populate each I'd like a live indication of which fields have been updated and which have not. I don't know how to achieve this?

Related: I have a few fields that respond to a Yes/No value field. How can I have a live count of how many records have "Yes" in that field?

[stefangs]

for your first question, i'm sure someone will have a more elegant way to achieve this than i can think of, but for @2, perhaps the following will help:

create a selfjoin relationship based on the record's field that hold the value. that way, you can evaluate the number of yes or no occurences with the formula

Count ( selfjoin::valuefield )

hth,

stefan

[comment]

I'd like a live indication of which fields have been updated and which have not.

Updated - since when? And until when should this indication last?

How can I have a live count of how many records have "Yes" in that field?

This would be a lot easier if you used 1 and 0 (or empty) as your values - then you could simply sum the field.

[msadesign]

You are so right about the use of 1 and 0. So, I tried building a calculation like this:

sum(if(change="Yes",1,0))

But that won't work.

Then I tried breaking it apart creating change_sub

if(change="Yes",1,0)

and then summing

sum(change_sum)

and that won't work either.

I'll try the self-join technique, although I confess I never really understood that. Now is as good a time as every.

[comment]

There is no SumIf() function in Filemaker, and the Sum() function doesn't work the way you think.

If you want a "live" indication of how many records of the current found set have "yes" in the Change field, use a summary field defined as Total of [your calculation field].

If you want a count of all records in the table, define a self-join relationship using the x relational operator. Then you can use the Sum() function to sum the related records - or just place the related summary field on your layout.

---

BTW, the calculation can be simply =

Change = "yes"

(assuming you don't want to make the Change field itself to use 1/0).

Edited August 22, 2010 by Guest

[msadesign]

There is no SumIf() function in Filemaker

I left out a paren. This is what I had: sum(if()). But as you point out, Sum doesn't work the way I was thinking.

If you want a "live" indication of how many records of the current found set have "yes" in the Change field, use a summary field defined as Total of [your calculation field].

The introduction of Parts is what I was hoping to avoid actually.

---

BTW, the calculation can be simply =

Change = "yes"

You lost me here?

(actually you lost me on the self-join, which I'll need to fully understand if these other methods don't work).

[comment]

See if this helps:

SumBoolean.zip

[msadesign]

This is exactly what I wanted.

Newbie question: how do I populate both Tables with the same Serial value?

Thanks for staying with me on this.

[comment]

There is only one table. It is related to (another occurrence of) itself.

[msadesign]

thanks again, will try it in the morning.

[msadesign]

This worked great! Have been fooling around and didn't want to respond till I was happy with it. Thanks to everyone here for taking the tie to help me out. It is appreciated mucho.