Thanks for all the input, everybody.

The solution was to take Richard's original response to the shipping guys -
fortunately they're a good-natured and humorous bunch. 

Initially amused by the contents of an email from the far side of the world,
the global opposition to their request for re-usable numbers led to a quick
surrender. With FileMaker strictly controlling number issue by script, there
could be no "missing numbers" and therefore no "dropped" cargo. So the cups
have been put the right way up....never underestimate the power of this
list.

Steve, I understand your solution involving a destination port table with
one record per port. But it is a multi-user, server environment, and I have
had problems before where two users grabbed the same serial number using
this type of "add one to existing record value". In this solution, duplicate
document numbers would cause huge problems. How to avoid that? Is it
possible for user1 to lock that port record, add one to serial number, set
to a variable, commit and exit?

Regards
Peter



 

-----Original Message-----
From: FileMaker Pro Discussions [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Mike
Sent: 22 December 2011 17:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Serial number

Hi Peter,

I did something like this once because of a very similar customer 
request that made perfect sense at the time. I handled it all with scripts.

If a document was deleted, I stored the number. When assigning a number 
to a new document, I check my deleted documents list to be sure there 
wasn't a number that I needed to reused before I assigned a new number. 
There is some management of the list required, but the script has run 
flawlessly for over 8 years.

Hope that helps.

Mike

On 11-12-22 5:54 AM, Steve Cassidy wrote:
> On 22 Dec 2011, at 05:29, Peter Buchanan wrote:
>
>> So any further ideas on the gaps?
> No. But further ideas based on the situation you describe.
>
> If you were to assign the numbers only at the moment of sailing (or
whatever is your cutoff point for absolute final documentation), then
there'd be no problem with cancellations...
>
> So what about using some kind of 'in-house' provisional numbering if
needed during the cargo manifesting process leading up to departure. Then
use a script to assign correctly serialised numbers at the point when you
print/finalise the summary document.

>
> Maybe you could come up with some other means of ensuring that no cargo is
'dropped'. (In fact, I can't really see how studying the summary report
helps to locate any dropped cargo; you might want to investigate this
process in more detail to see what you can contribute.)
>
> Steve