I am trying to use a calculation field with a text result to produce an sql query.

When I enter several lines of text and then a field it tells me that it is longer than 253 characters.

Is there a limit to the amount of characters that a calculation field can have. If so how is everyone storing their long sql queries.

Thanks,

Wayne

Sounds like you're using an older version of Filemaker; upgrade your software and this problem should disappear (there used to be a 256-character limit, but now the limit is exponentially larger).

How old is old? You get this message in 5.0.3. I haven't tested it in 5.5.

The limit of 253 is how many characters you can have between your "" marks in a calculation. If you make your query up from field contents - which will give you greater flexibility as well - then concatenate the fields, then I think the limit is up around 50,000. In this way you can make your query up from some global fields plus components from fields specific to the record you're in, or any combination...

If you don't want to do that, then use = "xxx" & "yyy" & "zzz", as your calculation where xxx, yyy and zzz are each less than 253 characters.

I am running ver 5.5v2. I thought that was changed in v5.5 but I guess not.

If the file is a shared file off of a server putting the data into globals will not work because when you close out you lose the query.

Have you ever shut down the files on the server, opened them as a single copy, enter information into globals then reshare the files via server. The information is there but my question is how stable is it?

The other way you mentioned is a possiblility but was hoping to avoid it.

Thanks,

Wayne

To get around the globals issue you can either:

a. Include a starup script in your files which sets the local global fields using a calculation, or

b. Have a one record Preferences file as part of your system and store the contents in fields in the Preferences file. Then when users startup, have a script which sets their local global fields from the preferences file using a relationship. You can expand this concept so that users local user-specific global fields are saved back in the preferences file into their own allocated records (Preferences would then have one record for each user) or fields on shutdown.