Just got this from John Weinshel and had to share…
“I love SQL, love that it’s as old as relational databases, sort of Codd’s afterthought. It’s like Freud, after describing his entirely new model of the universe, added a coda, psychoanalysis, for putting it to use. Except SQL is free and it works.”
Priceless.
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Very proud to have shipped SQL Explorer, a tool for learning SQL (so you can use ExecuteSQL in FileMaker 12) using FileMaker metaphors you already know. You can learn more about the Explorer and download a copy here: SQLexplorer But I wanted to take a moment and point out three things that make this a new kind of product for us…
1. This is the first product we built using a FileMaker 12 theme. All the layouts in the solution are based on the Onyx theme, though we did add some of our ow
The problem.
SQL, including the new ExecuteSQL calc function in FileMaker 12, returns dates in this format: YYYY-MM-DD. This can be a bit of a pain if you have a string of text like this and just want to transform the date part:1170 - 2012-03-09 - - Keep: Beta Presentation @ BRN Co1171 - 2012-03-15 - 08:30:00 - Call Arthur Murray to finalize data1172 - 2012-03-16 - 12:30:00 - Conference call with Melinda1173 - 2012-03-20 - 11:15:00 - @ Breakfast
The calc for the results above looks like this
If you wanted to use a tab control on your layout but hide it from your users, you used to have to cover it with another tab and/or make the tab text very small. This is because you both have to visually hide the tab AND prevent users who actually click on it’s tab controls from activating it. While this worked, the layouts were kind of hard to use in layout mode: it was often hard to find the tabs at all.
Fortunately this is a lot easier in 12. And not only because tab controls work in layout
Simplify and Stay on Screen
FileMaker 12 lets us run SQL queries against our own FileMaker tables. This has been possible with plugins for a while and a number of serious devs like Mike Lee, Greg Lane, and Kevin Frank have been talking about what a great technique this is. I completely agree and think the new ExecuteSQL calc function is the killer feature of FileMaker 12.
Before SQL
There are a few reasons for this and I hope to get to write about more of them. But for now, consider
We’re thrilled to announce our new Free Calendar Template for FileMaker 12. We’ve rewritten the free calendar to take advantage of some of the new things in FileMaker 12, including the new look and feel, but perhaps most importantly, the new ExecuteSQL function.
This makes the new calendar simpler, less dependent on context, and easier to integrate.
Checkout this short introduction demonstrating how this new SQL stuff makes things simpler:
Now download a copy of the new calendar and d
David Knight of Angel City Data has put out a great webinar for FileMaker on performance tuning your FileMaker Go solutions.
Needless to say, for “the ultimate performance” he endorses using the solution locally and syncing to the server using GoZync. (Thanks David!)
David also has a nice shout out to Jason Young’s 2011 DevCon session on making FileMaker Server your super user.
Watch the webinar.
Learn more about GoZync.
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geist interactive has just released a new add on for FileMaker Go that let’s you draw on photos. The unlocked file comes in Free or Pro versions and is easy to integrate into your own files.
We’ve been playing with this for a bit and it is awesome!
A few highlights:
* Draw right on your FileMaker Go Screens
* Store the drawing data in your database
* Drawing works offline
* Save drawings as PDFs – attach to emails
* Draw on images, photos, and diagrams, even photos you too with the
Matthew Hardy of Real Estate Success Tools has put together a great video showing off how he’s using Zulu to link iCal and Google Calendar to his application.
Great overview and a link to the video here.
And if you haven’t seen his solution, REST, before, take some time to check out the site: it’s really well done. And as Matthew says, between Zulu and FileMaker his users can now interact with REST from any platform.
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Beautiful stuff here… http://design-milk.com/2012-modern-calendars/
Especially this one from Calouette.
And if you need a shared calendar, SeedCode Calendar is on sale (and bundled with Zulu iCal Sync) though Dec 31st.
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A lot of folks have been asking for the Virtual List example file we put together with Bruce Robertson, so here it is: VirtualList.zip
This Virtual List technique is part of what make our Calendar fast, and allows FMSearchResults to show records from different tables in the same ‘portal’. We demonstrated some applications of this at DevCon’s Year in Review in 2010 and 2011, showing how this can really speed up FileMaker displays, especially those formatted as columns, grids, or lists.
Tod
We have a small subset of customers who wire their calendars up to act as dashboards on big displays. I’ve always thought this was cool and someday hope to get around to making one for SeedCode, a la the great dashboard at Panic.
One of these customers asked for something pretty cool today: they wanted to be able to cycle through the different resources on the calendar (recording studios in her system), showing each one on the week view for a few seconds, before moving to the next studio autom
Sometimes the hard stuff turns out to be really easy.
It always impresses me that Jason has a way of finding the simplest ways of doing things. For example, when iCal treats a holiday as an all day event, SeedCode can pick that up as a two-day event. A customer asked about how to work around this, changing the iCal parser in SeedCode Calendar Pro.
Jason sent them this screen shot showing how you can more easily teach SeedCode to ignore the end date of the holiday calendar, after the iCal eve
This weekend, Todd Geist and I took the train up from LA for a 33 hour code sprint and built the start of Worx, the next file for GoZync.
This is a great way to work and we got a ton done.
Todd on the Coast Starlight
Worx is a work orders system for iPad: users in the office assign orders to technicians and those techs “zync” the orders down to their iPads before completing the orders. Orders come down with contact info, maps, and a serious items database capable of browsing and selecti
GoZync can be a little tricky to add to your file, this is why many people build out from our example FMGo file, and why we offer implementation packages to do it for you. Once it’s in, however, GoZync is quite easy to extend. It is a framework, after all, and we built it to be extensible.
We anticipated that you’d add fields to mobile solutions you already deployed–thus GoZync can deliver new builds to your users–and we made it easy to add fields to mappings you’ve already established. This v
Very proud of the crew in the UK for pulling this off. Sessions look great; really wish I could get there.
Ian’s stuff on SQL in particular is very much in line with what we’re working on these days. SQL + Virtual List = Happy. Other’s I’m looking forward to… Carl Henshall : Customisable Shrinkwrap Solutions, John Renfrew : Supercharging PDF, and Fabrice Nordmann : Using xml structure within FileMaker.
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Here is a short video showing how we’re collapsing GoZync’s left hand side bar as you rotate your iPad.
For another gorgeous example of this technique, and more details, check out Yann Liqueur-Salzedo’s work here.
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For anyone heading to the show, we’ve published the DevCon Schedule out to Google Calendar:
https://www.google.com/calendar/ical/u7govide9q9ihq3al95gm7ja4o%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics
From FileMaker, via Zulu of course.
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