General questions -- hope they're not redundant. I've purchased and initially imported in the data from my old site, a tractor registry. But, it looks essentially like a flat-file database, and not relational at all. I need guidance on cleaning up that database and setting up structure/relationships.
1. Must I use categories and subcategories to set up the relations? e.g. Makes > Models Or, can that be done via a separate table of makes and models like a true relational database? I'm having problems visualizing this is in the IPS GUI.
2. Can I create an additional 3rd level, ie. a sub-subcategory? I really need three levels: Make > Series > Models
3. How does this all relate to the ACP Setting of: "Enable database selection" On input forms does that make that field a pick list?
I'm familiar with using the Categories and Subcategories in Pages, since I have a different database of about 1500 records but it is using 3 levels, with about 140 total categories/subcategories. I've found it quite fragile in the IPS drag-and-drop GUI. I've had records link to themselves twice due to moving categories around in that interface. (I think there's been a change made to 4.1.18 that prevents that.) But, I am not using anything like the "Enable database selection" in that implementation. I'm using the Categories and Subcategories simply to organize and navigate -- and at the lowest level of the tree each record is a page of content. It is essentially multi-page articles organized three levels deep.
This Registry application is a different animal....and I really can't go much farther until I conceptually understand how it operates.