I apologise for this long and detailed explanation. I was hoping I might see
the light while typing it, but that hasn¹t happened, so I cast it before you
in the hope someone knows what to do with all this. I have a feeling there
won¹t be an easy answer!

I'm building a database of food products. I have all the data in a flat
format (supplied in Excel and imported to FMPro).

Each product has the following format:

Temperature ­ Group ­ SubRange ­ SkuRange(optional) ­ SKU CODE ­ Name ­ etc.
(the rest are product attributes and post no big problems)

For example:

Frozen ­ Meat & Poultry ­ Sausages ­ Cooked Sausages ­ F2233
Frozen ­ Delicatessen ­ Rice - [no sku range] - F1234
Chilled ­ Cheese & Dairy ­ Yogurt ­ Mixed Packs ­ C9999
Chilled ­ Fresh Produce ­ Potatoes - [no sku range] - C8888

The names of Groups, SubRanges etc are longish text strings and prone to
typographical errors. So I want the customer to be able to click on a field
and see a drop down menu of the appropriate available headings. Or add a new
one. (I know I should probably give them all numeric IDs... this is supposed
to be a short-term solution, I don¹t want to get too bogged down...)

I built tables for each, set up various relations, and created value lists
based on the relations. At first it seemed to work ­ in the Product table,
creating a new record, you could click on Temperature and see the 4 choices,
then click on Group and see only the choices within the chosen Temperature
etc.

But when I created a new record in the Group table, I was unable to make
that option appear. I ended up making all sorts of value lists based on all
sorts of relationship and got into an unhappy mess. That¹s when I realised I
should have drawn it all up as a diagram before I started. But I found I
couldn¹t do that in a meaningful way either!

Temperature has a one to many relationship to Group
Group has a one to many relationship with SubRange
SubRange has an optional one to many relationship with SkuRange
... but how do these relate to Product?

Any ideas?

Thanks
Emma

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