A better way would be to separate the addresses and people into different record sets. The first record set might look like this:
%rec: Person %type: Dob date %type: Abode rec Residence Name: Alfred Nebel Dob: 20 April 2010 Email: alf@example.com Abode: 42AbbeterWay Name: Mandy Nebel Dob: 21 February 1972 Email: mandy@example.com Mobile: 0555 342123 Abode: 42AbbeterWay Name: Bertram Nebel Dob: 3 January 1966 Email: bert@example.com Abode: 42AbbeterWay Name: Charles Spencer Dob: 4 July 1997 Email: charlie@example.com Abode: 2SerpeRise Name: Dirk Spencer Dob: 29 June 1945 Email: dirk@example.com Mobile: 0555 342123 Abode: 2SerpeRise Name: Ernest Wright Dob: 26 April 1978 Abode: ChezGrampa
and the second (following in the same file), like this:
%rec: Residence %key: Id Address: 42 Abbeter Way, Inprooving, WORCS Telephone: 01234 5676789 Id: 42AbbeterWay Address: 2 Serpe Rise, Little Worning, SURREY Telephone: 09876 5432109 Id: 2SerpeRise Address: 1 Wanter Rise, Greater Inncombe, BUCKS Id: ChezGrampa
Here you can see that there are two record sets viz: Person
and Residence.
There are six people, but only three residences, because some residences
accommodate more than one person.
Note also that the Residence descriptor has the entry %key: Id
whilst the Person descriptor has %type: Abode rec Residence.
This is because Abode is the foreign key which identifies the residence
where a person lives.
We could have declared the Id field as %auto. This would have had
the advantage that we need not manually update it.
However, we decided that the Abode field values in the Person records
are better as alphanumeric fields, so that they can contain
human readable values. In this way, it is self-evident by reading a Person
record where that person lives.
Yet since the Id field is declared using the %key special field
name, you can be sure that you don’t accidentally reuse an existing key.