Hi Guys/Gals/Et Al, I'm trying to set up a database solution for "Right Moves For Youth," an organization whose purpose is to counsel "troubled" students from ages 10-18, and, hopefully, convince them to stay in school. Toward this end, RMFY has established from 1-4 "clubs" at each school (15-20 kids/club) to which students can "belong" and to which volunteers, police officers, and civic leaders are also assigned and contribute their time. In addition, volunteers and officers may meet one-on-one with certain kids outside of club meetings as part of a "mentoring" program. Clubs typically meet each week as a group and do various activities together (field trips, workshops, etc). The number of clubs at each school, though, and their meeting days/times, and membership roster may change with each school year. All students have unique "student ID" numbers, however, which follow them throughout their school career. [FWIW, there are roughly 5000 students, 400 volunteers, 50 officers. We're using FM Pro (v5) and FM Server on a Windows NT Server with W98 clients (6)]. RMFY wants to track: 1) Contact info for all students, volunteers, and officers; 2) attendance and hours contributed by all volunteers/officers either for the group or "one-on-one;" 3) the historical progression of students through the program (i.e., Johnny was in Club XYZ during 1999, ABC during 2000, etc.) and, (possibly later) some performance measures associated with each of the little criminals.....er uhm.....kids. I am wrestling with how much of this to try and handle WITHIN ebase and how much to handle via other FMP files which relate back to ebase. I've toyed with using the "Householding" function to capture several records as a "Club Household," but this seems awkward and more suited to simply consolidating mailing labels. My sense (what little there is left) is that ebase does a wonderful job of tracking contact info and payments and determining current membership status based on payments, but that for tracking more "activity-related" aspects (hours, historical progression, etc) of a population which does not make payments, that the use of some supplemental files running in tandem with ebase might be more workable. I've come to the tentative conclusion, therefore, that using external files [e.g. "Club Members" (roster), "Activities" (incl. hours logged), "Club Schedules" (static info), "Club Contracts" (join file between Clubs and Members) etc] which relate back to ebase for the basic contact info of individual records is probably my best strategy. I would then create portals within ebase (in the Custom screens) which show various info in the external files. I would be grateful to hear what more "seasoned" developers think of this approach and any obvious pitfalls they (you) might foresee. Am I "over-designing" this solution or correctly addressing the issue? Are there any "referential integrity" issues with FMP I will need to consider? Should I rethink and try and consolidate more of this within ebase? Once again at the Well and praying to the Great Indexer, Colin Cooler
