Database Reference
In-Depth Information
a sort order, records will appear in the order they're created, from the first created to the last.
So if you're creating Line Items for an invoice, the line items will normally appear in a portal
in precisely the order in which you create them. But maybe your company likes line items to
appear sorted by an internal Part Number field because it makes fulfilling the orders easier
for the warehouse. Or your employees may enter their timeslips at the end of the week in-
stead of daily, and they sometimes enter them out of order.
The Edit Relationship window lets you sort a relationship by any field in either table (when
you select the option, you'll see the regular Sort Records window). You can sort the relation-
ship by any sortable field in the table to show related records in the order you prefer, but it's
far more common to sort on the to-many side.
It's important to note that sorting a relationship doesn't just change the order of records in a
portal. Remember that you can show related records without using a portal, but if you do, the
related field shows only the
first
related record. A relationship's sort order can change that
first record, which may not be what you intended, so be careful about sorting relationships.
See the box on
How Do I Know Where to Sort?
for more information on sorting relation-
ships and portals.
Managing the Relationships Graph
Although the JobsInvoices Relationship graph is small and easy to understand, chances are it
will grow as you power up your database by adding more tables (and even as you add new
features, as you'll see through the course of the next few chapters). As it grows, your graph
can easily get messy and hard to decipher. But the Relationships graph has lots of tools for
keeping things uncluttered and easy to understand (
Figure 5-14
).
