>Hi all. I am going to sit down with some new coworkers in a week or so
>and do a brief ebase lesson, and I wanted to see if anybody had any
>tips/ideas/warnings. These folks do not need to know too much about the
>ins and outs of ebase, they just need to know how to open it properly,
>how to do some of the more complex finds, etc. Basically I need them to
>be able to get some basic information out of the database w/out needing
>too much help or messing anything up. :) Just wanted to see if anybody
>has "must teach"es for a brief lesson like this, in case I have
>overlooked something.
"The more complex finds," will be a challenge. I continually deal
with confusion in creating queries. The way FileMaker implements
logical AND searches (all the criteria on the same request) and
logical OR searches (using multiple requests) is usually tough to
explain.
You have a search framed as a description...
"I want to find everyone who lives in Seattle and everyone who lives
in Tacoma." I used the word AND, so this must be an AND search,
right? But how do I put both Seattle and Tacoma in the same City
field?
This is actually an OR search. Get people to frame the search
criteria starting with
"Every record must be..."
So you'd say, "Every record must be someone who lives in Seattle OR
lives in Tacoma." Two requests, one with Seattle in the City field
and the second with Tacoma in the City field.
or, for example, "Every record must be someone who lives in Seattle
AND gave more than $100 last year." One request with Seattle in the
City field and >100 in the Last Year $ field.
It also has helped me to draw Venn diagrams - intersecting circles
showing the results of an AND search (the smaller area that is in
both circles) and an OR search (the larger area that is in either or
both circles). People seem to get it more quickly with the visual cue.
--
--
Dave Shaw H4 Consulting
tel: 206-954-7526 fax: 206-625-1338
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