I have a parent child relationship defined in my database but there is not always a child for every parent.  I would like to display ALL Parents and child records when they exist in a single portal.

Hey Gerry. Your request is a little brief, but maybe this will get you started?

Portals are for displaying related records via any relationship. A portal based on your parent->child relationship will show any child records, or show no records if there are none.

If you create a layout based on your parent record, and show a portal on that layout to your child relationship, then you will have a layout that shows the 'children' if there are any. Then choose 'View as List' from the view menu (when in Browse Mode) and you will have a list of parents each showing their children if they exist.

You cannot have a portal that displays another portal on each row, since portals within portals are not allowed. There are techniques to display information from records further down the relationship graph within a portal, but they are many and varied.

If this doesn't get you started then please submit a more detailed requirement and we can be more specific.

This is my database design:  Projects -> Issues -> Tests

I have a layout based on Projects that has a portal where I want to show all issues and tests.  The problem comes when I have issues with no tests.

eg.    Issue1    Test1
         Issue1    Test2
         Issue2    <no test>
         Issue3    Test1
         Issue4    Test1
         Issue4    Test2

There isn't always a test for every issue depending on the stage of data entry.  I can get the portal do display EITHER all Issues or all tests but not BOTH.