Hi everyone,

This has really stumped me. I have been thinking for a couple of weeks on how to solve this; and can't crack it.

Essentially I am trying to setup a database for a customer (FMP11) for furniture. Pretty simple. One of the things they would like to have, is a related products section on the layout for each product. This would be a portal displaying all the furniture that is similar to the current item. The user would establish this relationship by adding the ID to the portal; and creating another 'similarity' relationship between the current product, and its similar brother/sister.

This is where it gets interesting. The related product, is not multiple related records in another table; but rather related products in the same table. Pretty easy right? Just create a second occurrence of the table. That would work; but the problem is; I want these relationships to be mutual. What I want; is when I have products a b c d e f g h i, and I set a's related products as b d g h, when I go to the respective records for b d g h, and look in the related product portals, I would like to see a listed for each of them.

I hope that's clear.

I can imagine a way of doing it; which is defining a relationship to a table with recordID1 and RecordID2 and linking them to the primary table with a relationship "where ID = RecordID1 OR where ID =RecordID2" but Filemaker's flaw is that the relationship doesn't allow for the setting of OR for multi-criteria relationships, only AND.

Any advice would be appreciated. I've toyed with repetitions and calculations... but no luck.

Filemaker's flaw is that the relationship doesn't allow for the setting of OR

Yes it does: in the join table, define a calculation field =

List ( RecordID1 ; RecordID2 )

and use it as the matchfield.

See also:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/38282-join-table-inverse-relationships/

Yes it does: in the join table, define a calculation field =

List ( RecordID1 ; RecordID2 )

and use it as the matchfield.

See also:

http://fmforums.com/forum/topic/38282-join-table-inverse-relationships/

Would I be right in saying that under this setup; one would not be able to create new records via a portal? How can one do this?

Thanks again for the help.

one would not be able to create new records via a portal?

No, not via a portal based on this relationship. But there are plenty of other ways, e.g. select a product in a global field and use a script to link it to the current one.