To VA FileMan, a pointer is always "single valued" (unless it's a Variable Pointer!!)
I want to say something from the perspective of C J Date with regard to his Third Manifesto dealing with "nested tables" not violating First Normal Form. VA FileMan anticipated this development and implemented it over 20 years prior to its "discovery." All "tables" are projected as two dimensional, with rows and columns. But how do you put things in a column that aren't always scalar values or anything that can be expressed as only one string of characters (no internal repeating "fields")? The trick is thinking of columns as "domains" that define the kind of objects that are found in that "domain". That means that one could have a domain of "tables" as a column! And that's exactly one kind of domain data type that VA FileMan "understands"! The "top level field", MENU (field number 10) is a data type of "multiple". In other words, it's a "table" data type (as opposed to a single valued entry data type). But you can't "see" the individual rows of that table at the "top level" (there isn't just one pointer there), you have to in effect join the ID for the Option the MENU is on with the IDs (i.e., Internal Entry Numbers, the values that are the IDs for the row which holds the "Pointer" as the first value in its .01 field) for the rows in the MENU "table". Each row in the MENU "table" is identified by the IEN for that row. The "pointer" that's stored in the .01 ITEM field in the MENU "table" isn't the same as the IEN (the row's ID in that table's instance). -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Kevin Toppenberg Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2004 12:32 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [Hardhats-members] Subfile numbers Greg, Thanks for your answer. I am confused, though, about the POINTER issue. FIELD^DID says that the multiple field is of type POINTER. Yet you say that pointers can not point to subfiles. Are you sure on that point? Thanks Kevin --- Greg Kreis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >Furthermore, if I ask for the TYPE for this field > #10, > >I get back "POINTER" > > > >Is there any way to tell if the pointer is to a > >separate file, or whether it is a subfile? > > > Pointers can only point to files, not subfiles. > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by OSTG. Have you noticed the changes on Linux.com, ITManagersJournal and NewsForge in the past few weeks? Now, one more big change to announce. We are now OSTG- Open Source Technology Group. Come see the changes on the new OSTG site. www.ostg.com _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by OSTG. Have you noticed the changes on Linux.com, ITManagersJournal and NewsForge in the past few weeks? Now, one more big change to announce. We are now OSTG- Open Source Technology Group. Come see the changes on the new OSTG site. www.ostg.com _______________________________________________ Hardhats-members mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/hardhats-members
