Which relationship structure to use?

[Susan Krzywicki]

Hello,
I have a form where each record is a different plant species (including height, width, sun/shade and other characteristics that do not change).

I have another form that is my garden inventory (which has the quantities of each plant in certain areas of my garden – for example, 5 Salvia spathacea in the bioswale and 3 Salvia spathacea along the street edge – these items do change over time as I add plants or a plant dies).

I’d like to know how I link these two. I’d like my garden inventory to link to the plant species form, so that I can just click that arrow thing and go over to the static info to check on information about how that plant ought to perform.

And, of course, I am confused. I was thinking the plant species form was the parent, but I really work from my garden inventory form because I am always updating these records – making notes about which specific plant is doing what – I keep a notes field where I make my observations about how this plant species or small group of plant of the same species are doing in that spot in my garden.

So, I may have 5 or 6 plantings of the Salvia, and on each record, I want to link back to the plant species data record. Which way should I do that?

Is the garden inventory the master? Do I use “many to many” or would “join” provide a better way of working?

Any insights would be appreciated.

[Brendan]

Hi Susan,

Perhaps a screenshot of both forms would be beneficial in order to see how they might relate to each other.

The Join Link Type requires a common field between the parent and the child that Tap Forms can use to connect the forms. So maybe you have a “Garden ID” field on the inventory form that you can link to a “Garden ID” field on the Plants form or something like that.

A many-to-many would allow you to have the same plants listed in different Garden Inventory records.

But keep in mind that if you use the Link to Form field and you change a quantity value in a Plant Species record, that value will change wherever you see it. One way around this issue is to use a Table field instead of a Link to Form field. When you select records from the Plant Species form to link to your Garden Inventory form, Tap Forms will make a copy of the selected record rather than just a reference to it.

Not sure if I’ve confused the situation or not though.

Thanks,

Brendan

[Susan Krzywicki]

OK, I think I see a glimmer. I am going to play around with this a bit, and if your reply isn’t enough for me to figure it out, I’ll send screen shots.

Thanks.

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