Isolating Relationships

Isolating Relationship

CATEGORY: Relationships
CLASS: Relationship Graph

By default, the FileMaker relationship graph naturally leans towards a structure where every table occurrence is linked to another. Since FileMaker relationships can ...

- flow through one table occurrence to another
- flow in a bidirectional manner
- include tables from external files

the amount of flexibility in FileMaker relational design is almost endless! That almost endless amount of flexibility in a complex database structure can practically kill said database solutions more likely than empower them.

In practical FileMaker database design, you may want to lean more towards a relationship graph that would be inspired by the television show detective Adrian Monk. (http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk/) Just like Monk wouldn’t want the peas and carrots on his dinner plate to touch, you would likely not want to have your table occurrence groups to touch.

Isolating your FileMaker relationships into logical units (called TOGs for Table Occurrence Groups) is a method adopted by most professional and in house developers. The most common technique is employing a method called Anchor / Buoy.

© 2010 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com
The material on this document is offered AS IS. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.