VISUAL QUICKPRO GUIDE FileMaker Pro 7 Advanced FOR WINDOWS AND MACINTOSH [Electronic resources] نسخه متنی

About Self-Relationships

Not only can you relate one table to another, you can also relate records within a table to each other. This is called a self-relationship. There are lots of situations where self- relationships are useful. If you have a table of names containing many contacts that work for the same company, you can create a self-relationship in a portal to list everyone working for the same company on each individual employee's record. Portal entries can be defined as buttons to switch between records. You can also use a self-relationship to do simple finds, create summary fields, and even create lookups to speed up data entry.

To create a self-relationship

1 .Choose File > Define > Database (Control+Shift+D/Command+Shift+D). When the Define Database dialog box appears, click the Relationships tab.

2 .Click the Edit Relationships button. When the Edit Relationships dialog box appears, choose the name of the current table in both drop-down lists (Figure 6.44). In this case, the table is called Customer.

3 .

Select the field you want to use for the self-relationship from both scrolling lists, then click Add. In our example, we use the Company field (Figure 6.45).

4 .Click the "Sort records" check box on the right. The Sort Records dialog box will appear.

5 .In this example, we'll set the Sort criteria to LastName by double-clicking to choose it (Figure 6.46). Click OK twice.

6 .

The Add Relationship dialog box will appear. Since this is a self-relationship, you need to add another occurrence of the table to the relationships graph. In the Name of Occurrence input box, type Contacts by Company, then click OK (Figure 6.47). Click OK again to finish.

To display and access self-relationship data

1 .Switch to the layout that will display the related data and choose View > Layout Mode (Control+L/Command+L).

2 .Make sure the layout has enough room for the portal. If it doesn't, drag the Body tab down to resize the part.

3 .

Click the Portal tool. Click on the layout and drag the pointer out and down to size.

4 .

In the Portal Setup dialog box that appears, click the "Show related records from" drop-down menu and choose the Contacts by Company table occurrence for this portal (Figure 6.48). Click OK.

5 .When the Add Fields to Portal dialog box appears, select the fields you want to display.

In this case, we'll add Full Name and Title (Figure 6.49).

6 .

Click OK to finish. Switch to Browse mode to view the portal with the related data (Figure 6.50).

The names listed in the portal are from the records where the company name is the same as the current record.