Question about linking records

[Geoffrey Aldrich]

Greetings,
I’ve just recently stumbled across this program, and it looks very promising for my needs. I’ve been looking for a proper database application for a while, and I thought that Bento would be a good fit for me. However, it was not a relational database and then FileMaker discontinued it, and I didn’t want my data trapped in an orphaned format.

I’m planning on using Tap Forms to catalog my currency collection. I’m also accustomed to relational databases (I’ve previously developed Microsoft Access databases as a part of my job as a software engineer). However, I’m a little baffled about how linking records (relational database) works in Tap Forms.

In currency collection, there are always particular attributes about a particular note that are shared across other notes of the same series (say a $1 Federal Reserve Note dated 2009) all have the signature of Treasurer Rios and Secretary of the Treasury Geithner. In addition, there is an range of dates where the print run was made.

In my database, I’d like to have a field called “Series” that could be (and likely should be) a pick list. Once I make a selection from the pick list, I’d like Tap Forms to automatically populate other fields in the record (such as the aforementioned Treasurer and Secretary of the Treasury). However, I have not been able to find a way to do this.

I presume that I would start by making a separate “form” (otherwise called a data table in database lingo) that contains all of the data about the series that would auto-populate. Beyond that, I don’t know where else to go.

I appreciate any help you can offer.

Regards,
Geoffrey

[Brendan]

Hello Geoffrey,

The Pick Lists are designed just for quick data entry for specific fields. The Link to Form field is for relating one record to multiple records in another field. It’s not really a lookup where it’ll populate other fields in the parent record.

There’s a writeup about it in the online manual for Mac:

http://www.manula.com/manuals/tap-zapp/tap-forms-mac/2.0/en/topic/relationships

It gives some samples and screenshots on how it is useful.

Thanks!

Brendan

[Author]

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