Single Source of Truth
Having worked with FileMaker for well over 20+ years, and experiencing a wide variety of data models, it's always possible to get into a situation where you need to re-evaluate the data decisions you've made with regards to your structure.
The data model you may have initially thought would handle all situations may need to be modified. Knowing about the multiple options you may have available for structuring your data makes a big difference when you start to consider simply "adding that new field" to your database.
It may be that the workflow or process required would cause duplication of data and therefore increase the complexity of your solution unnecessarily. In this video, I cover the topic of a Single Source of Truth for storing field data. While the topic isn't limited specifically to fields, and should be considered for tables and data overall, it's good to know how to deal with specific cases where storing data becomes a big concern when dealing with additions, updates and deletions. Be prepared to learn more about strategic ways to store data in this video about Single Source of Truth.
Comments
SSOT
how would you handle this:
we should only have on table for people but in some case it is an employee and another a customer or vendor etc
how would you link several tables to the people table and still know what parent table a particular person belongs to
don't forget someone can be a amploee and a customer etc...
Peter Cortiel
Party model
Hi Peter, I suggest you do some research about the "party data model". A couple of links:
https://youtu.be/kfiP8TQ1Jtg
https://www.amazon.com/Data-Model-Resource-Book-Vol/dp/0471380237
Constants as calculation fields
Hi Matt! I think there is no need to define calculation fields constants as unstored. The behaviour is the same as when leaving them stored. Thanks very much for you video!