Not All Fields Displayed in Table View
I receive tab-delimitted files of test results from our state's K12 testing system.
Each record contains 256 fields.
When I view the data in FileMaker 11's Table View, it only displays the first 60 or so fields.
Is this a limitation of FileMaker?
I was surprised when I experienced it, but it appears to be a limitation, as the layout when viewed in Layout mode shows all records present.
That's why I prempted my statement with the info that this is a test results file that I get from the state, not a database schema that I have designed.
I canot change the structure of the file. It will destroy the workflow of getting the data from the state and moving it to its eventual reporting tool.
The state is testing student performance in various subject areas, and there are a lot of them. Each subject area has a test result value and a max value so that percent correct can be calculated.
The number of fields is out of my hands.
I canot change the structure of the file. It will destroy the workflow of getting the data from the state and moving it to its eventual reporting tool.
Have you considered a system that imports the data, distributes it to related records and then recombines the results into the needed structure for your reporting tool?
The state is testing student performance in various subject areas, and there are a lot of them. Each subject area has a test result value and a max value so that percent correct can be calculated.
That looks made to order for a system of related tables so that you have one record for each student and a related record for each subject area.
The number of fields is out of my hands.
The number of fields may be out of your hands during import and export, but how you deal with them in between those two points is most definitely in your hands--and I think this structure, as imported, will eventually drive you crazy due to its unweildy format.
No. I know this data. And I know database schema.
The state gives us the data in a crazy-stupid format.
Every grade level and every root subject (Math, Reading, Science) has a different set of fields.
For example: the 5th field in a Grade 3 Math record is different from the 5th field in a Grade 7 Math record, and different again from a Grade 7 Reading record. Some records don't have the same number of fields, within a record, or even within a test subject.
Those fields change again from year to year.
And yes, I could build a very complex system that first filtered the results by grade and then by subject and apply custom schema importing to each subset of the resulting data sets, but I am not designing a reporting system, I just need a to do a quick thing with the data.
The suggestion to redesign the schema of the database is beyond the scope of this project, and not an answer to my question, which is why can't FMP simply display all of my data horizontally like I can in Excel (I detest Excel in other areas, which is why I am not using Excel to begin with).
It *should* be simple to do for a database as advanced as FileMaker.
The suggestion to redesign the schema of the database is beyond the scope of this project, and not an answer to my question, which is why can't FMP simply display all of my data horizontally like I can in Excel (I detest Excel in other areas, which is why I am not using Excel to begin with).
Please note the work around I put in my first post. That's the best I can suggest.
yup - I did.
I was pretty surprised to find this limitation within FileMaker
Yes, this is a limitation in FileMaker.
One workaround is to create several such layouts and set them up to display a different subset of the total number of fields. You can then put buttons in the header to select the layout for the "view" you need.
Frankly, 256 fields is a lot of fields for one record definition. Very often, a re-design that moves some of that data into one or more related tables will greatly improve the design of your database.