Can I do this with links to forms?

[Peter Riley]

Hi,

I have managed a media database in Tap Forms for some time, keeping track of my music. The ‘Albums’ form has the holds the media data and the ‘Artists’ form has a ‘one to many’ link to the ‘Albums’ form so I can see what I have by each artist. So far so good.

Until now I have lived with albums being duplicated in the ‘Albums’ form where I have copies in both CD and vinyl format (I do want to be able to reference each format of an album independently, to log condition, loans out etc).

In an attempt to avoid the album name duplication issue I created an ‘Album Formats’ form that records condition, loans etc, and a ‘Formats’ field in the ‘Albums’ form that has a ‘one to many’ link to the ‘Album Formats’ form. That works fine with an inverse relationship so on the ‘Albums’ form I can see all formats of a particular album I have, and no longer need duplicate album entries. However, in doing so I’ve broken the relational link between the artists and their albums and I can’t see a way of linking the ‘Artists’ form to the ‘Album Formats’ form to get that back. Is it possible?

Thanks

[Brendan]

Hi Peter,

You would have to maintain a separate link to go from Artists directly to Album Formats.

Maybe if you post your Album form template (.tff) file I could help a bit better so I can see exactly how you have things setup.

Do you have something like this then?

Artists -> Albums -> Album Formats

and you’re wanting to get directly from Artists to Album Formats? You would have to have that link established.

[Peter Riley]

Thanks Brendan,

I attach .tff files as requested. Ignoring the ‘Album Formats’ form for the moment, until now the db has worked on the basis that I start by inputting the Album details, including selecting the Artist from the ‘Artists’ form (the ‘many-to-many’ relation enables me to select two or more artists where an album is a collaboration between artists who also have their own separate output), and populating the ‘Format’ and ‘Condition’ fields. Then from the ‘Artists’ form I can see which albums I have by that artist. I guess you see this as standard stuff.

Where I have albums in multiple formats I have to create another record for that album in ‘Albums’ but this time with details of the alternative format; this works well in the sense that each format displays in the linked artist record in the ‘Artists’ table but the downside for me is that I have numerous near-duplicates (ie, duplicated titles) in the ‘Albums’ form. So I thought it would be a good idea to create a separate form – ‘Album Formats’ – to record the format, condition, purchased date etc of each format of the album, handled by a ‘one-to-many’ relation from ‘Albums’, instead of having those fields in the main ‘Albums’ form. That works well from the title duplication perspective, but breaks the link with the ‘Artists’ form, in the sense that I’m seemingly unable to link the ‘Artists’ form with the ‘Album Formats’ form and see the related album data. I suspect it might be because the ‘Album’ field in ‘Album Formats’ is itself a relational field and not a text field?

Cheers

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[Peter Riley]

Hi Brendan,

I’ve been having a play and I think the attached v2 .tff files might be the best solution. I’ve made the link between ‘Album Formats’ and ‘Artists’ a join. It does mean that I have to manually enter the album title and artist names into ‘Album Formats’ when I’m adding an album, but that isn’t the end of the world when the auto-complete box is checked.

One workaround I had to devise was where an album is a collaboration, for example Love, Devotion, Surrender by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin. What I had to do there was make the album artist ‘Carlos Santana & John McLaughlin’ and then add them individually in the ‘Guest Artist’ field so that selecting Carlos Santana in ‘Artists’ includes that album as part of his work.

Maybe this isn’t the most efficient way but it seems to be working, and will solve the main problem which was duplicated titles in ‘Albums’.

Cheers

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[Brendan]

hi Peter,

Well it sounds like you managed to get something working for you. And that’s great.

Thanks,

Brendan

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