Sharing common data

In designing your schema you might find that you need to share data that is common to multiple records. For example, your schema might use a stateless record type to record information about customers who report change requests against your product. Users enter the customer name, e-mail address, and so on in the Customer tab of the change request record form. Because it is likely that multiple change requests will originate from the same customer, it is useful to link to customer records so that users do not have to repeatedly enter the same customer data each time they submit change requests.

To link multiple records to share common data, you use the REFERENCE_LIST field type. For example, you can add a field of type REFERENCE_LIST named customer to your change request record type. In the Reference To field of the field properties window, you specify the record type to which to link. For example, if you record customer data in the Customer record type, specify Customer in the Reference To field.

In the change request record type form, add a parent/child control for the customer field so that users can select a customer from a list.