In Panorama, relational operations are performed “on the fly” with various lookup functions. So you don’t set up relations in advance, you simply specify what the relations are when needed. The basic function for this is the lookup( function, this allows you to specify that a single field in one database is related to a single field in a second database.
Panorama X has a new function called superlookup( that allows more complex keys, for example using more than one field in each database, or even a formula to define the relation. For example, you could have one database that had separate first and last name fields, while a second database has one combined field for first and last names, and using superlookup( you could relate these two databases even though they have different field configurations for the keys:
These functions can be used anywhere a formula can be used. For example, in a form or report, you could display a relation on the fly by using one of these functions in a Text Display object. A typical example would be displaying related information from a customer database in an invoice.
Another place lookup formulas can be used is in an automatic field calculation. You would use this to copy related information into the current database as data is entered. For example, when constructing an invoice, you would probably want to copy the current price for each item into the invoice, so that if you come back to the invoice some time later, you’ll see the price that was charged at that time, rather than whatever the current price is.
If you want to do lookups on many records at once, use the formulafill statement.