1. DC User’s Group Meeting, August 4, 2010 – FileMaker Go!

    August 3, 2010 by Sameer

    FileMaker recently released a new program for the FileMaker Suite of products, FileMaker Go, the Mobile solution to database connectivity. As you may have read below in our review of the product, there are some rules and limitations for FMG that need to be addressed if you plan on developing for this new platform. The DC area is lucky to have an Engineer from FileMaker, and even luckier to have that Engineer present a special User Group meeting on the new iOS FileMaker Application.
    Please join us Wednesday August 4, 2010:
    FileMaker, Inc.
    One Metro Center
    700 12th Street NW Suite 700
    Washington, DC 20005
    Introducing [...]

  2. FileMaker Go – a Quick Review

    July 23, 2010 by Sameer

    Just a few days ago FileMaker released their newest version of FileMaker, running on the Mac OS mobile platform. Wittingly named FileMaker Go, this new version of the software shows excellent promise for mobile database access. With full screen, multiple windows, and multiple database access, FileMaker inc. has gone all out with this new version.
    The first thing to note is FM Go’s price, which runs at $19.99 for the iPhone version and $39.99 for the iPad version. After completing the download and starting the application, we get a very nice looking home screen which contains files loaded on the device, [...]

  3. FileMaker 11 – Charting

    March 12, 2010 by Sameer

    Finally it’s here! FileMaker Pro Version 11 was announced Tuesday March 9th, and the flagship feature of FileMaker 11 is the new Charting objects. I wanted to talk about how the new charting system works, and also some generalized rules when using the charts.
    First thing we should go over is the different types of charts available. There are Bar, Horizontal Bar, Line, Area and Pie Charts available for use. The charts will work with Found Sets of Data, Related Data, and Delimited Data within one record. Some limitations exist with the Pie Chart, which can only show one set of [...]

  4. Script Trigger Dangers

    by Sameer

    An interesting problem occurred to me the other day while I was working on a client’s system, and although I narrowed down the issue right away, an idea for this blog came to mind. What are the dangers of using script triggers in a database system with FileMaker Pro 10 (and now version 11), with regards to automation and interface design? Interesting issues seem to occur due to the nature of triggers and their given behavior.
    Using object based triggers seems to be a popular method of delivering automation. Whether you are auditing user interactions, or you are automating tasks based [...]

  5. DC FileMaker User’s Group

    February 3, 2010 by Sameer

    If you are a user or developer of File Maker Pro and are located in the Washington, DC Metro area, please come to the DC File Maker User Group meeting today, February 3.  It will be held at the FileMaker office at 700 12th Street NW downtown, from Noon until 2:00 PM.  The meeting will feature special guests from eConnectix, who will be demonstrating their XFM FileMaker Server. In a real-world implementation at Tekserve in NYC, which has 160 simultaneous clients, 87 files, 15 million records, and 10 GB of data, the eConnectix box was able to reduce back-up times [...]

  6. Basic Centralized Scripting

    January 17, 2010 by Sameer

    One idea commonly overlooked in the new FileMaker engine is the ability to centralize scripts. For example, instead of writing a dozen or so “Go to related…” with some table name at the end, I have the ability with script parameters to write one single script called “Go to” which uses a series of If, Else If, Else statements. This is available in previous versions of FileMaker, however with the addition of a script function called “Set Field by Name” I can go even further with my centralized scripting to include scripts such as “Create New Related Record.” This script, [...]