How to Set a "Is Modified" flag

[infoweb]

Hi there,

 

I've spent some time researching this and also trying different combinations, but just can't seem to work out how to do this easily.

 

I have a table with around 93 different fields.

 

I need to be able set a flag on a record when any fields in that record are modified. ie have a IsModified field.

 

Then I need to be able to reset that field once the data has been exported.

 

The obvious issue is that simply resetting the IsModified field is a modification so I can never seem reset it.

 

I have looked at the option of using the trigger function in a calculation - That works BUT I'm concerned that as we add further fields in the future it would be quite easy to forget to update the IsModified calculation to include the new field.

 

Basically I'm looking for a way to do this so that it doesn't have to be updated each time the table is modified.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions or resources I can follow up on how to implement this?

[comment]

Instead of resetting the LastModified field, set a LastExported field to the current date/timestamp. Then if =

LastModified > LastExported

you will know that the record has been modified since the last export.

 

 

I have a table with around 93 different fields.

 

I have a hunch you need to re-examine your structure. What kind of entity has 93 attributes that need tracking?

[infoweb]

Thanks for the suggestion. That would make it much easier!

 

 

 

What kind of entity has 93 attributes that need tracking?

 

It's a product table - Filemaker acts as a central repository for our products and data is exported to 3 different systems that all have different table / field structures.

 

Between the fields in each separate table and various calc fields etc, the number of fields has grown...

[comment]

It's a product table - Filemaker acts as a central repository for our products and data is exported to 3 different systems that all have different table / field structures.

 

I am not sure what exactly that means. Unless the main purpose of your solution is to serve the other systems, I would suggest you do not let their data structures affect your own. Instead, look into XML/XSLT export that allows you to transform the data during exporting.

[infoweb]

Basically, we create new products in Filemaker, then export the data from filemaker into 3 different systems.

 

Each system has different fields. We need to export to csv files with specific header text, since we are running on a shared filemaker server (ie no access to the file system) I can't export from one table to another on the server. so I keep all the data in calculated fields and use it when exporting each external.

 

I'm sure there are better ways of managing this though... i should do some research on how to optimise this one day.