Our database only has constituent records for parents, and students are listed as relationships. What is the best way to find out parents of 9th-graders (for example), using class of, and excluding students who have left.

 

Thanks 

I am curious as to why the students don't have their own record?

Having said that--the students have in individual relationship an attribute where you can keep track of students current grade. that would allow you to pull them out.

I would consider keeping a table called something like  "year attended" which you could have the grades listed and put the date indicate what year they were in each grade.

so you would have

Year attended 1st grade 9/15/08

year attended 2nd grade 9/15/09

year attended 3rd grade 9/15/10

etc.....

then you could querry realtionship son/daughter with attrubute  year attenede with descriptiong 9th grade, year needed.

 

 I'm in Development and our RE database is parent and alumni-focused. I'm looking at changing that in preparation for integration with our Registrar's Office EE database.

Adding an attribute for each grade level attended seems like a lot of extra work considering I'd need to do it every year for 1200+ students. 

I would not add a grade level attribute either for the reason you explained.  Why can't you put in an estimate graduation date and use calculations based on current date to determie current grade level?

Well, I was using Relation Education Class of equals 09 (for example) to get 12th-graders and Education Status does not equal Left (we use education statuses of Left and Graduated). However, Relation Education Status does not equal Left yields different results from Relation Education Date Left is blank, when I thought those results should both be the same.

I suppose I should just leave it alone, but I'd love to know why Relation Education Date Left is blank works and the other doesn't.
 

(((Relation Education Status does not equal Left yields different results from Relation Education Date Left is blank, when I thought those results should both be the same.))) If "date left" is not required for the status to be "left", then you can have people who left but nobody recorded the date on which they left. So "date left" will be blank and "status" will be "left".