Custom Serial Auto Enter Serial for New Records

[wmirtle]

Anyone please help... I have just begun using Filemaker for an office project. I am aware that it also has the auto enter serial number like other DB apps like MS Access. And like Access, it increments the next serial number internally without much control for what the next value would be. I tried the "on commit" and "on creation" option but once it gets to a higher value, it does have the ability to detect whether next number is in the proper sequence. ( 1, 2, 3, 4, 5... vs. 1, 2, 4, 5, 6...) I'm still learning how this can be solved, so far this is what I have come up using the scriptmaker feature...

Enter Browse Mode []
Show All Records
Unsort Records
Go to Record/Request/Page [Last]

The next (embarassing) steps I have tried were If statements but always results in errors. I also thought of calculated fields but somehow it still doesn't work since it doesn't know where to get values and always stay blank.

I am really stumped here, please help... Thanks in advance!

 

[lebisol]

what happens if the record is deleted?
Should the sequence get recreated for ALL the records all over again?
eg.
---------------
1 house
2 chair
3 - deleted
4 table
5 NEW
---------------

after deletion
---------------
1 house
2 chair
3 table
4 NEW
---------------

because of this you are generally better off using an auto-id since the fact that you 'calculated manually' the next number will loose significance after a few records are deleted.
Something to think about ...keep it simple ;-)



:-------------------------------------:
Do the DW »|MostarNetworks|

 

[JeanW]

Or, going further on lebisol's idea, you can search for the 'missing serials' first and create a records using the missing numbers first, before adding 'new'.