Portals in FileMaker Pro

Portals are important tools in the FileMaker toolbox. In their most basic form they display data that pertains to the essential relationships in a given system. For example, a record for a neighborhood might show all the related house records in a portal, or a record for a class might show a portal of all the students enrolled in that class. Portals in cases like this reflect the primary relationships in a database. This is especially true if you make use of portal functionality allowing for the creation of related records; portals then can serve as the mechanism by which related records are created.

Portals can also serve a wide variety of user interface needs. They can be used to present a pick list for selecting records for various functions. They can be used to display ad hoc reports. They can even be used to present navigation or function options to users, display images, or offer alternative list views combined with form views of data. Portals can be used whenever a developer needs to display n rows of virtually anything on a layout.

This chapter begins by covering some basic portal details, but after we've moved through that information, we get to some more advanced techniques. We recommend this chapter for everyone, including beginners and advanced developers: Working with portals is a fundamental part of becoming adept with FileMaker, for whatever purpose.