Portal not displaying all related records

[FMquestions]

Hi all,

I have an issue with getting a portal to display all the child records. As you can see in the ERD attached, there is a measurement table, that is a child of the test date table and both the measurement and the test date table are children of the people table. A person can have multiple objects, which will be measured at different test dates.

I am creating a report for each person that is on the measurement table using the object as subsummary. I would like to display all the person's test dates in a grand summary section above all the measurements. At first, I tried using a portal to display all the test dates but only the first test date is being displayed. The measurements are from multiple test dates. Any thoughts on what the issue could be? Is this an issue with the relationship?

Thanks in advance for any feedback you can provide.

[comment]

A person can have multiple objects, which will be measured at different test dates.

That's not what your ERD shows: there is no specific object associated with a measurement. I believe it should look more like:

Groups -< People -< Objects -< Measurements

I am not sure Dates or Reports are entities.

[FMquestions]

Thanks for the response.

There is a separate report and date table for a reason. Multiple types of report will be generated and stored in container field so that the reports can be downloaded and access in IWP. The dates table store other information relating to the test. Each measurement is associated with a test date and an object. However, the object may not necessarily have a measurement for each test date. Is that clear?

[comment]

The dates table store other information relating to the test.

That's not quite clear. Is there something common to all tests performed on the same date? Or perhaps only to tests performed on the same object on the same date?

[FMquestions]

The table stores information such as the test date, description about the test, the test number, modality of the test ....

No, even if two people have a test performed on the same date, it is not guaranteed that they will both have the same tests. For each test date, there will be at least one measurement. For instead, let's say a person has 2 test dates (T1, T2), 2 objects, and 3 measurements. For T1, there is one measurement for object 1 and 1 measurement for object 2. For T2, there is only 1 measurement for object 2.

[comment]

The table stores information such as the test date, description about the test, the test number, modality of the test ....

OK, then if this table describes the test, then it's a table of Tests. I am still not sure what makes the two measurements for 2 different objects "live under the same roof" of T1, but it looks like you have:

Groups -< People -< Objects -< Measurements >- Tests

To print a report, it would be best to use a layout of Measurements, summarized by People, Tests and Objects (or any other order you may wish).

If you want to associate Tests with People, even before selecting the objects to be tested, you will also need to have a direct relationship between the two (as shown in your ERD). Note that such relationship, unless limited to a date range, will list ALL Tests of a person - which may not correspond to the found set of your report.

[FMquestions]

Thanks. Does this mean I should have a second TO linking tests to measurements?

[comment]

You will certainly need more than one TO for some tables; which ones depends on how you prefer to organize your RG - and that in turn may depend on your preferred workflow.

[FMquestions]

I do need the test dates link to the person and I need them link to measurements as well. It seems like I need a second TO of tests In order to get all the related studies to display in the report, If data for the test table is being imported, would I need to import twice (to each TO)?

[comment]

If data for the test table is being imported, would I need to import twice (to each TO)?

No. The data is in the "base table". A TO is merely a representation of the base table in the graph - it has no data of itself.

[FMquestions]

Ahh, of course.

I created a second TO of the test dable and linked it to the measurement table by the studyID but I am still having issue displaying all the related test date. I added an additional subsummary on the report, which is sorted by the person. I placed the portal in this subsummary section but no record is displayed.

[comment]

I don't see your file, so it's hard to say. Note that each layout is tied to a specific TO, and so is a portal - so what you see in a portal is determined by the relative position of the two TOs on the graph.

Also, sub-summaries play no role in a portal/relationship. As suggested earlier, produce your report from a list view of Measurements.

[FMquestions]

Thanks for clarifying.

There is another issue I came across and I was wondering if you can share your thoughts. I have a layout on the People table with a portal that displays data from the measurement table. However, 2 of the fields from this portal are displaying records from the object table. What I noticed is that all the related records have been changed to reflect the data from the first related record. For example, one person has 3 measurements for 2 objects so there are a total of 6 measurements in this portal. 3 of the measurements should be for object 1 and 3 for object 2. However, all 6 records displayed the name for object 1. Do you have any ideas as to what is causing this?

Thanks in advance.

[comment]

I have a layout on the People table with a portal that displays data from the measurement table. However, 2 of the fields from this portal are displaying records from the object table.

If the chain is:

People -< Objects -< Measurements

then the portal to Measurements doesn't go "back" to find out which object is the link for the specific portal row. However, if you add a new TO of Objects "behind" the portal TO as:

People -< Objects -< Measurements >- Objects 2

and point the object fields in the portal to the Objects 2 TO, it will work the way you expect.

Another option (for display only) is to have unstored calculation fields in the Measurements table, duplicating the data from Objects.

[FMquestions]

Creating a second TO for object does take care of the issue but another issue arose. On the measurement table, the summary field is not displaying the sum of the measurement. Does this have to do with the 2nd TO?

Regarding the use of portal for related data, I was wondering if it automatically changed the data in the situation I described before where all 6 records displayed the name for object 1. This is a set of imported data who were assigned pk and fk IDs to maintain relationship between the different tables. Thus, the measurements that were entered had an object fk ID to indicate which object is being measured. On a layout that lists all the measurements for a certain person, I added a field to display the object fk ID and noticed that it has been changed to the ID for object one. Did this change occurred through the use of the portal?

[comment]

I am afraid I don't exactly follow your description. In any case, the data stored in a table is not modified by using a portal to display it.