Relationship Issue with Text with Decimals?

[spoonman]

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer. Is there an issue with having a relationship based on a field containing text with decimals, such as 'MA.7.G.3.1'. For some reason, the relationship won't work and I'm trying to troubleshoot why.

[Lee Smith]

Please Update your Profile to reflect what version of FileMaker and Platform, and OS you are currently using.

Lee

[comment]

Is there an issue with having a relationship based on a field containing text with decimals, such as 'MA.7.G.3.1'.

There shouldn't be - provided both matchfields are of type Text.

[spoonman]

There shouldn't be - provided both matchfields are of type Text.

Thanks very much for the response. I'll go into more detail to describe my database in hopes someone can help me figure out the issue.

First, I am not a developer, but a teacher whose been using FM for 15 years, creating solutions for myself and my colleagues to make our jobs a little easier. I've come up with some pretty useful tools for teachers, but most of my more complex work is successful because I read peoples' solutions on forums like this, I copy them and customize them to my own needs. So I'm designing a database to analyze test data. I have a table in which each record represents one question from one test for one student. For example, 'Joe Smith' takes a test called MATH7 which has ten questions. There are 10 records in this table representing his answers to the ten questions. I needed to calculate the test score, so I did a self-join (read about this idea on a forum) based on the Student's ID and the Test ID and created a calc field with the following calc: Sum ( TEST QUESTIONS_Self::Answer )/TEST QUESTIONS_Self::# Of Test Questions. This worked like magic. Now I'm trying to employ the same idea, except instead of summing the whole test, I want to sum just certain questions, called benchmarks. This is critical for the database. In the test MATH7, there are 4 questions from the benchmark MA.7.G.3.1. I created a new self-join based on Student ID, Test ID and Benchmark and created a calc field with the following calc: Sum (TEST QUESTIONS_Self2::Answer)/TEST QUESTIONS_Self2::# Of Benchmark Questions. This did NOT work. I tried several variations of this calc with no success. I hope I've explained the situation well and I hope someone can help. Thanks for your time.

[comment]

Hard to say. First you said "the relationship won't work". Now you say it's the calculation that's giving you the problem. I don't see your file, so I cannot say either way.

BTW, I believe it would be better to summarize the results using summary fields and sorting by test, student and question type.

[spoonman]

Hard to say. First you said "the relationship won't work". Now you say it's the calculation that's giving you the problem. I don't see your file, so I cannot say either way.

BTW, I believe it would be better to summarize the results using summary fields and sorting by test, student and question type.

Thanks for the reply. It seems there is something wrong with my 'Benchmark' field. See the attached picture. I followed your advice and created a summary based on Benchmark, but when I sorted it, the groups didn't show up.

'Benchmark' is a calc field: GetRepetition ( Student_Tests_Input::BENCHMARKS_COVERED;Question# ). 'Benchmarks_Covered' is a repeating field in a related table.

Thanks again for the help.

[comment]

I am afraid I cannot learn anything from the picture. Perhaps you should attach a file - preferably a simplified version, showing only the issue.

You didn't say you were using repeating fields, and I am not sure you should be. This may be related to the problem or not, but in any case it's something you should consider.