i have a set of databases (houses, rooms, artifacts). i need to search and display records for multiple criteria. for example,

display all rooms of type 14 with skeletal and ceramic material

or

display all houses with room type ala that also have triclinia

i know how to relate the house/room databases to display the appropriate room and i can find the artifact materials separartely but i don't know how to do both in filemaker. i know how to do it in sql and access but the databases are in filemaker and i have to use it to do this project.

can anyone direct me on where to look?

thanks much.

if you have portals it easy.

assuming the house database is the one you have to be seaching from, create 2 portals to other database.

if you doing it by hand, just enter find mode and type in the data in the relevant fields and hit find.

if you scripting it, you'll enter find mode like normal but for any field in the other datbases, use SetField to set the fields using the relations you defined for the portals.

Depending on how you've entered your data, and how you want to find multiple criteria you can use repeating fields or new request scrip step.

Repeating fields use alows you to find ONLY those records matching ALL your criteria, using new record request script step will allow you to find all records matching ANY of the criteria.

You can do a multiple criteria find by making the fields containing data into repeating fields and the data can be entered into just the first part of the field (all of the parts of the repeating field do not have to be displayed. Using the format field button you can limit the displayed RF to 1 field.) In the find layout you have all, lets say four parts, displayed in the portal. In find mode, enter each of the different criteria into the RF parts. If the field is nationalities, entering French, Spanish, German will yield only those records containing all three terms.

Using the new request script step, while in find mode, allows you to enter the term once, then press a button scripted for new request to enter another criteria. When all the desired criteria have been entered, executing the find will show all records that match any ONE of the criteria.

If you are interested in matches of criteria in held in different fields the earlier replay will do well.