Member
Registered: 2008-11-26
Posts: 4
Multiple Categories
I am not quite getting how sharing fields among Multiple Categories works.

According to DabbleDB help, the following allows for sharing one field between two categories.

“Apply multiple category filters- If any of the entries in your view are in Multiple categories, you will have the option to add additional category filters. (The option will appear below the existing filters.) This will restrict the view to entries belonging only to both or all of the categories.”

I have two categories in my Application – Symmetrical Content..

1. Car Color (Color, Car)
2. Paint Number (Color, Paint Number)

Color is a field that is identical in both categories and has identical data (Blue and Red). However, when I go to create a filter, I do not get the option to add additional category filters. That is, it does not seem to be “reaching out” to the other category with the same field. So I can only make a filter within one category.

If you would like you can check my categories, you can look at any of my tables under my Symmetrical Content application that you need to, and make any changes to Car Color and Paint Number categories. They are just test categories.
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#2 2008-11-29 12:22:38
panmanphil
Member
Registered: 2008-11-28
Posts: 3
Re: Multiple Categories
Your problem is very similar to the one I just posted about asking for Union type functionality. If I’m reading this correctly you want a filter that gives you all Car colors and Paint numbers with the same color, say Blue. In database terminology that would a join of the two sets.

From what I’ve been learning here, you would instead have a paint number category and a car category and the car would contain a link to entry matching the color. Now your car category could filter on a specific color, or return all cars with their color and paint number. The latter you would do with a derived field from the paint number category. Make sense?
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#3 2008-11-29 12:49:39
ultra.snapp
Member
Registered: 2008-11-26
Posts: 4
Re: Multiple Categories
Thanks for your reply.

I was with you, until you mentioned the derived field. However, to have a derived field, you need to link the two fields in different categories. My understanding was that fields that are shared among multiple categories are not linked, they are actually the same field.

If you will notice the bottom of this URL http://www.dabbledb.com/help/forum/view … hp?id=3044

I do not get the “Ad filter” drop down. I think I need that to share fields across categories. I don’t get this drop down even though I have identical field names and values in two different categories in the same application.
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#4 2008-11-29 14:17:09
redtexture
Member
From: USA
Registered: 2007-10-01
Posts: 249
Re: Multiple Categories
Just in case you did not see this, “Link to entry” is the one-to-one relation for linked categories.

You must explicitly configure a field to make the link.
http://dabbledb.com/help/index/link_to_entry

You create the link to entry by configuring an appropriate field that is able to uniquely pick another record. Typically some kind of ID that would be the same for both different categories. 

Do take care when you do convert your field type.
It is easy to lose your data into an unintended transformation.
Undo is your friend.

Once you have a working link, you can, “derive” a field, by clicking on the linking field, to display a copy of the field from the “other” category.
Last edited by redtexture (Yesterday 14:13:26)
– Redtexture — just another DabbleDB user
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#5 Yesterday 16:46:56
ultra.snapp
Member
Registered: 2008-11-26
Posts: 4
Re: Multiple Categories
Yes I have seen that help page.

However, I am not creating a relation between two fields. I am attempting to actually leverage the ability of a DabbleDB field to “belong” to two different categories. I don’t understand it actually, but I have setup what I thought were the necessary conditions in two tables allow DabbleDB to reach out and provide multi category filtering as an option. I have not seen that option come up.
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#6 Today 10:13:35
Luke
Administrator
From: Toronto
Registered: 2007-07-02
Posts: 1715
Re: Multiple Categories
Hi there,

A specific *field* can only belong to one category. What multiple categories offers is the ability to have an *entry* in more than one category. The entry will then have fields from each of the categories. So I think the problem here is that it doesn’t work the way you thought.

That said, given the data and categories that you have, I think what you want *is* actually a relation between the categories. If you change the Color field in one category to be a Link to Entry to the other category, and make sure you tell it to match to the corresponding Color field, Dabble will create the appropriate link and allow you to “derive”, e.g., the paint number from the Car Color category.

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