Planning a DB for a small eco-cruise boat
1 to 3 trips per day 10-40 passengers
Passengers come to office, pay and get boarding pass/receipt
Currnently working fine with a Flat file repeating fields, each trip a
record DB (FM3-4-5-7)
But think better if each passenger is a record and each trip is a record
(and each crew (for payroll) a record)and use portals and relationships (or
tables) to facilitate receipt & boarding pass printing, reports, etc.

Although a FM user since Forethought days, not too practiced with portals...

Could some of you mavens give me an idea.

Thanks

Guy
www.marinediscoverycenter.org

I assume you have FM7 by what you said.
Create the tables:
TRIP
PASNGR
CREW

In TRIP create the fields:
Serial (auto enter serial#)
ID Crew (number)
DateOfTrip
any other info you want to store

In PASNGR create the fields:
Serial (auto enter serial#)
ID Trip (number)
PassengerName
price etc.

In CREW create the fields:
Serial (auto enter serial#)
CrewName

In the relationship graph create a link between the following:
CREW::Serial = TRIP::ID Crew
TRIP::Serial = PASNGR::ID Trip (select the allow creation of related
records on PASNGR)

In the Trip layout display the field CREW::Name beside the field "ID
Crew". Create a value list of CREW::Serial & CREW::Name and attach it
to the "ID Crew" field. Whenever the field "ID Crew" is populated the
matching crew records' name is displayed.

Also in the Trip layout create a portal displaying records from PASNGR
and put the fields "PassengerName" in the portal. You should have a
blank portal row at the bottom, you can type a name into it and FM will
create a PASNGR record and populate the "ID Trip" field with the Serial
number of the Trip record that your looking at.

Assuming you want to print a boarding pass; create the layout and
select PASNGR as the source table. In the portal in TRIP put a button
that runs the following script:

Go To Related Record PASNGR using the layout Boarding Pass
Show All Records
Omitt
Show Ommitted
Print
Go To Layout original