What do all the good FileMaker girls and boys want for Christmas?
December 23rd, 2011
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Tiz the season to be jolly and all that. So What is on the good Filemaker developers wish list? Read more…
Archive
Author Archive
Phidgets Pt 1 The Hardware
November 2nd, 2011
1 comment
We are just about to start a project to allow employees to log in and out of a FileMaker system using RFID tags. In the past we have done this by hanging a Phidget RFID reader directly off the back of a computer. In the past we have always had a computer available for the purpose but this project not only has the requirement for a number of readers to be distributed around a factory but the readers have to work substantially faster than FileMaker and an attached phidget can work.
FileMaker can not take NULL for an answer
September 19th, 2011
4 comments
While NULL is a concept familiar to SQL users FileMaker developers tend to have little exposure to the idea. Effectively NULL is the value given to a field who has no known value. It is distinct from an empty field or a field that contains the text NULL. NULL has some interesting characteristics most based around the fact that NULL ≠ NULL so SELECT * where field = NULL will never return any values; NULL never equals anything even itself. To test for NULL within MySQL the IS NULL function is used.
Capturing entire webpages into a FileMaker container field
August 16th, 2011
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Recently a client requested we capture webpages for them. As a marketing company recording evidence of the exposure they gained their clients is key requirement. They had for many years manually stitched screenshots together. While cheap this approach was incredibly time consuming, tedious and prone to mistakes.
Sub-summarys within portals pt III
June 10th, 2011
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Sub-summarys within portals pt II
May 10th, 2011
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Welcome to Pt II of the sub-summary portal tricks post. As it continues straight from the first post it may be worth skimming through that post.
Optimising the Case Statement
April 19th, 2011
1 comment
There are a few optimisation strategies for Case. At a simple level consider the Let statement…
Let([
f1 = field1;
f2 = field2
];
Case (
f1 = 0 and f2 = 0 ; <result1> ;
f1 = 0 and f2 = 1 ; <result2> ;
f1 = 1 and f2 = 0 ; <result3> ;
f1 = 1 and f2 = 1 ; <result4> ;
<default result> )
)
Sub-summarys within portals pt I
April 5th, 2011
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There are a few ways to achieve a ‘sub summary’ look with in a portal. The simplest is to hide repeating data with conditional formatting. Using the getnthrecord to work out if you are on the first or last record and showing relevant data. If you wish to show a sum then you will need to use a self join the using the parent key and whatever field you are sorting by.
MySQL Optimisation Strategies to Improve ESS performance
February 14th, 2011
3 comments
Filemaker’s ability to connect to any of the major SQL databases without having to do any SQL is a real killer feature but performance can often not be what it might. Often this is caused by Filemaker having to hammer the SQL data source. There are a few tricks that can move a lot of the work onto the SQL side.
FileMaker Go – What is it actually good for?
September 21st, 2010
4 comments
We have seen an increasing amount of work on FileMaker Go recently and have come to a few conclusions. So here, based on our first few weeks with the product are some thoughts.
Categories: Business, Database, FileMaker, FileMaker Go, Linear Blue, Web FileMaker Go, iPad, iphone
