It just duh-curred to me that you could force a field to generate its
own self-referential value list. In my application, where a user needs
to enter the name of an insurance company in a field, I created a
value list that gets its values from that field; totally self
updating! It looks like it works as expected but, is this cool or
could it create some cascading mayhem down the road?
Thanks all,
Bill

I think this is the very application the FileMaker guys had in mind. Each
time you manually enter data into the field, it goes into an index. You can
use the index to populate a field.

Hope this helps.


"Bill Jaynes" <bjaynes@montanaport.net> wrote in message
news:cf397f78.0311051636.4f89094a@posting.google.com...
> It just duh-curred to me that you could force a field to generate its
> own self-referential value list. In my application, where a user needs
> to enter the name of an insurance company in a field, I created a
> value list that gets its values from that field; totally self
> updating! It looks like it works as expected but, is this cool or
> could it create some cascading mayhem down the road?
> Thanks all,
> Bill

Bill Jaynes <bjaynes@montanaport.net> wrote:

> It just duh-curred to me that you could force a field to generate its
> own self-referential value list. In my application, where a user needs
> to enter the name of an insurance company in a field, I created a
> value list that gets its values from that field; totally self
> updating! It looks like it works as expected but, is this cool or
> could it create some cascading mayhem down the road?
> Thanks all,
> Bill

It is one of the basic funtionalities of FM. That's why that "values
from a field" selector is in the Define Value lists dialog box.

Problems come when your list becomes too large, particularly in shared
files over a network. A list of 2000 values can take several (up to 10
or 15) seconds to display. Related value lists are even slower.
Type-ahead works, but also slows down, on large lists.

In addition, with certain Windows systems, if the formatting on the
field is as a dropdown Menu, not a list, there are system limitations on
the number of displayed items in a value list.

Also, you have the nice user habit of NOT using the dropdown, thus
rendering a list with entries like:

"United Foods"
"Untd Fds"
"Un. Food"
"Untied fods"

All of which are the same company, just spelled badly, and useless in
Finds and Sorts. In general, I like my value lists to be changeable only
by administrators. Usually, where users have to choose & specify a value
from a large list of possibles, I use a different mechanism, such as a
filtered portal, or a find on a list view, with a selection button to
enter the data into the field and return to the screen you came from.
One is modal, one is not, but both are much faster than very large value
lists from the field itself.

Lynn Allen
www.semiotics.com
562.938.7890