I have a database that has a many to many construction for documents
in an archive. Authors can have multiple documents and documents can
have multiple authors etc. In the case of authors and documents, I
have a join table which relates them. Here is my problem. I would
like to import citations from EndNote (a text, tab delimited
version). I can import the bulk of the citation just fine, but when
it comes to author or those bits which have the many to many
relationship, I can't do it. So I wind up with a bunch of documents
with no authors. I've read that it's best to import individual tables
separately, but if i do that I have no way to relate my data. Anybody
know if what I'm asking for is possible?

In article <1182448155.320756.50120 (AT) u2g2000hsc (DOT) googlegroups.com>
dharma <Dharma.Akmon (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I don't know how else you would do it.

In FileMaker you map to a single target table for a given import
operation.
If a single source contains data destined for more than one table, you
do multiple import operations, each mapped accordingly.

Are you saying that the author is not identified in the EndNote source?
BTW, what version of FileMaker?

Matt

In article <1182448155.320756.50120 (AT) u2g2000hsc (DOT) googlegroups.com>,
dharma <Dharma.Akmon (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

No doubt you have key fields that connect authors and documents to the
Join file, and presumably the Join file itself has a primary key field.
So the trick is to set up the end notes so that they come with a key
field value, which you can then populate with the appropriate key field
from the record you want to connect the end note to.

The first question to ask is: are the end notes related to an author, or
a document, or a join record? After you answer that question, set up the
relationship diagram accordingly. If some end notes are related to
authors, some to documents, and some to the Join table, than you would
need three key fields in the end notes records, one for author, one for
document and one for join table, with three Table Occurrences and three
relationships between the EndNotes and the other three tables. You
should of course also have a primary key field in the EndNotes table so
that you can build relationships on that also -- even many-to many if
that were appropriate.


As far as populating the related key fields of the endnotes, presumably
there is already some data in the end notes that identifies the
document, author or join table to which it should be connected. Use that
existing data to set up a different relationship to the Document, author
or Join table, then use the Replace Field contents to populate the key
fields by calculation based on calculation from the new temporary
relationship.

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Bill Collins