Developed by Data Equity LLC, SharpShooter is an analytics and troubleshooting tool for Time Matters. The following article is the first in a new series of topics taken from "SharpShooter's Field Guide". The Field Guide is designed to explain and offer repair tips for the test results provided by SharpShooter.

The following is an excerpt from the SharpShooter Field Guide on the topic of Orphaned Specified Relationships. Orphaned Specified Relationships are a long standing issue with Time Matters and are also closely related to a recently highlighted "linked updates" regression in the retracted SR3 of Time Matters 9 (and SR2C of TM8).

Orphaned Specified Relationships can be a common problem and their occurrence should give cause for moderate data integrity concerns. Detecting and correcting ongoing orphaned relationships will improve application performance and data integrity. To prevent these issues from occurring it is best to identify subordinate relationships prior to deleting Contacts and Matters.

There are two types of Specified Relationships; manual and linked field. Manual relationships are created when an end user explicity relates two records together in the Time Matters User Interface. This type of relationship is normally associated with a Relationship Code. The two most common ways to initiate this operation are by adding a relationship from the Related Records Tab or a Drag and Drop (between any two records).

The Linked Field relationship is a result of a form style defining a field as a lookup to another record. The lookup must be defined to receive updates when the "looked up record" is changed. As you can imagine, this can be (and is) the underlying cause of data integrity issues in Time Matters. 

 

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