Database Reference
In-Depth Information
NOTE
Rearranging your TOs doesn't change the way your tables are related, although it can change where
they appear when you open a relationship's Edit Relationship dialog box.
Connecting Database Files
In FileMaker, you can make two database files work together as easily as you work with
multiple tables. Using the techniques you already know, you connect tables from another file
(often called an
external data source
) without the overhead of copying all that data into your
file. You just put a table occurrence from your external file onto your Relationships graph,
and that defines relationship to all your other tables.
For example, suppose you have a Zip Codes database that you want to connect to the Invoice
system. You want to let users type in a Zip code, and the customer table's City and State
fields will use a lookup to automatically enter their data. You'll need a table occurrence from
the external file to your “local” file's Relationships graph. See the box on
Systems with More
than One Database
to learn more about why you might keep some tables in separate database
files.
