Portals and Pagination

[Bill Jaynes]

I want a report to initially allow as many as a hundred record/rows in a portal. It would seem that I should format the portal to show 100 rows. Then, not wanting much, I want that portal to slide back to as few as 2 rows or remain as large between 1 and 100 as the user wants in that report. Can this happen gracefully and will filemaker break

the portal for pages without complaint? I think I need some basic advice here (first working portal) and ..

Thanks in advance,

Bill

[Chuck]

A report that uses a portal for displaying information is almost never a good idea because portals can't slide as many other layout objects can. My advice would be to run the report from the file you have the portal looking into. You would create a "reverse relationship" so that the portal file would have access to information in the file you were originally going to run the report from. A reverse relationship is when you duplicate a relationship in the related file using the same keys in each file, just in the reverse order.

Chuck

[Bill Jaynes]

I had spent some time setting up the portal to do the work but your response makes it clear I need to make the records report in the related file. The first I've heard of a reverse relationship, though. What I liked about records in a portal was the security of only those matching records appearing and being summarized. You have been patient and clear; I've set up a columnar report in the related;

would you help me see how to have it contain

only the relevant records?

Thanks

Bill

[Chuck]

There's actually a very easy and reliable way to find the related records. In the master file, before going into the related file, run a script step for:

Go to Related Records [ Show, Related_File ]

Where Related_File is the name of your relationship (which you'll select from a menu when you add the Go to Related Records script step to your script) and the Show is for the option to show only related records. If after doing this script, you then call the reporting script in the related file, you'll be working with only those records that you would have seen in the portal. You may have to perform a sort once you get to the related file.

Chuck

[Bill Jaynes]

I'm studying your reply now.

I have some scripts in the master file that

go through the records in the portal and set

some position info for some calculated fields. Do you imagine I'll need to duplicate them in the related file after my sorts or could they be useable where they are. If you're not following, say so and I'll implement your suggestions above and post later if necessary.

Thanks much,

Bill