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FileMaker 2026 Released

Wing Forward Solutions

A blog by David Jondreau in Affiliate Blogs

  • Entries

    51

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    8

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    22,847

Entries in this blog

Toggle two fields

Say you’ve got two fields, both number fields, and you want to use them as flag fields, to be set to either 0 or 1. But they should always be opposite from each other. Changing one field should change the other and vice versa. At first, that seems simple. You just need to make each field an auto-enter referencing the other field, right? Nope. That doesn’t work. FileMaker’s calculation engine does not like that sort of circular references. Field A changes so Field B changes so Field A changes, e

Toggle two fields

Say you’ve got two fields, both number fields, and you want to use them as flag fields, to be set to either 0 or 1. But they should always be opposite from each other. Changing one field should change the other and vice versa. At first, that seems simple. You just need to make each field an auto-enter referencing the other field, right? Nope. That doesn’t work. FileMaker’s calculation engine does not like that sort of circular references. Field A changes so Field B changes so Field A changes, e

DevCon 2018 Review

DevCon 2018 was held at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center win Dallas, Texas from August 6th through the 9th and it was a great event. The Gaylord Texan (GT) is a destination unto itself. It’s enormous with several acres of open ground enclosed by a dome and a combination of a convention hotel and a family destination. There were a couple other conferences going on, including, notably, QuakeCon with hundred of video game fans hauling their heft PC towers and giant monitors through t

DevCon 2018 Review

DevCon 2018 was held at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center win Dallas, Texas from August 6th through the 9th and it was a great event. The Gaylord Texan (GT) is a destination unto itself. It’s enormous with several acres of open ground enclosed by a dome and a combination of a convention hotel and a family destination. There were a couple other conferences going on, including, notably, QuakeCon with hundred of video game fans hauling their heft PC towers and giant monitors through t

Fasting

In the blogs and forums I favor, there’s a buzz over the past few years about “intermittent fasting”.  The idea is that not eating all the time is healthy. As far as physical and emotional health benefits, the pop science seems intriguing and it meets my common sense filters, so why not try it? There’s a few different versions. 16/8 is popular. That’s where you only eat in the same 8 hour window each day. Say, from 10 AM to 6 PM. That’s sounds helpful, something I would call “time-restricted ea

Fasting

In the blogs and forums I favor, there’s a buzz over the past few years about “intermittent fasting”.  The idea is that not eating all the time is healthy. As far as physical and emotional health benefits, the pop science seems intriguing and it meets my common sense filters, so why not try it? There’s a few different versions. 16/8 is popular. That’s where you only eat in the same 8 hour window each day. Say, from 10 AM to 6 PM. That’s sounds helpful, something I would call “time-restricted ea

Modified timestamps and importing

At DevCon 2018, Molly Connolly led a session on data cleaning. During that session, there was a question of how to import data without updating the Modification timestamp. The goal is to display when a user last modified a record, not the developer. Two methods* of doing that were mentioned but there is another, more robust, answer. It’s simple and flexible: create an additional field that references the Modification Timestamp field and set a variable flag when you don’t want to update it. Le

Modified timestamps and importing

At DevCon 2018, Molly Connolly led a session on data cleaning. During that session, there was a question of how to import data without updating the Modification timestamp. The goal is to display when a user last modified a record, not the developer. Two methods* of doing that were mentioned but there is another, more robust, answer. It’s simple and flexible: create an additional field that references the Modification Timestamp field and set a variable flag when you don’t want to update it. Le

7 cool tools for better nerd living

If you’re a dev, you are a power user. Below are 7 digital tools that are indispensable, and not necessarily for coding. I don’t know if they share any common characteristics, except that when I don’t have access to them, I grunt in frustration.   Nanny / LeechBlock / WasteNoTime Distraction is a huge productivity killer. For me, it’s the #1 issue in ‘getting things done’. I’m an info junkie and I have low self control. Me, making a living at a computer, is like being a recovering alcoholic a

7 cool tools for better nerd living

If you’re a dev, you are a power user. Below are 7 digital tools that are indispensable, and not necessarily for coding. I don’t know if they share any common characteristics, except that when I don’t have access to them, I grunt in frustration.   Nanny / LeechBlock / WasteNoTime Distraction is a huge productivity killer. For me, it’s the #1 issue in ‘getting things done’. I’m an info junkie and I have low self control. Me, making a living at a computer, is like being a recovering alcoholic a

How to avoid collisions using UUIDs

There’s a simple way to avoid collisions when using UUIDs as primary keys: Use UUIDs as primary keys. No, that’s not a typo. The idea that Get ( UUID ) will create a duplicate ID in a single table, in a single file, or even all tables in all FileMaker files you ever create is, simply, false. I can hear someone out there (likely here) saying: “Whaaat? Just because it’s very unlikely, doesn’t mean it can’t happen”. And my answer is: “Actually, it does mean that. That’s exactly what it means.” H

Pause on Error Los Gatos: Day & Night

I went to the latest Pause on Error to learn what I don’t know. I walked away still not knowing a whole lot, but being energized to learn. Held over Memorial Day weekend at “The Presentation Center” (a dry name for a wet place) in Los Gatos, California, this PoE  earned the nickname “FileMaker Summer Camp”. The bucolic location in the Santa Cruz mountains on a site loaded with natural beauty and Catholic iconography, was simply stunning. I saw a deer my first half hour on the property, and anot

Interesting quirk for unrelated field reference in field definition

One apparent limitation of using ExSQL() in the separation model is that you can’t use unrelated tables in a field definition. So you’d need to related all your tables to one another. I just discovered that you can bypass that limitation simply by wrapping your statement in a Let() and declaring a variable that includes wrapping a field in the GetFieldName() function. So the expression: Let( field = unrelated::table ; field ) returns an error. However, Let( gfn = GetFieldName ( unrelated::

Interesting quirk for unrelated field reference in field definition

One apparent limitation of using ExSQL() in the separation model is that you can’t use unrelated tables in a field definition. So you’d need to related all your tables to one another. I just discovered that you can bypass that limitation simply by wrapping your statement in a Let() and declaring a variable that includes wrapping a field in the GetFieldName() function. So the expression: Let( field = unrelated::table ; field ) returns an error. However, Let( gfn = GetFieldName ( unrelated::tab

Triggering a server-side script Part II

Part II will include a custom function to create your URL, an example of a feeder script to manage the process, and an explanation of why the Guest account is necessary. In Part I of this series, I explained how to trigger a server-side script using XML. In this part, I’m going to give you a custom function to aid this process and explain why you need to enable the Guest account. First, the Guest account. To access the XML engine on the FileMaker Server by a browser, a user will always be take

Triggering a server-side script Part II

Part II will include a custom function to create your URL, an example of a feeder script to manage the process, and an explanation of why the Guest account is necessary. In Part I of this series, I explained how to trigger a server-side script using XML. In this part, I’m going to give you a custom function to aid this process and explain why you need to enable the Guest account. First, the Guest account. To access the XML engine on the FileMaker Server by a browser, a user will always be take

Triggering a server-side script Part I

FileMaker does most of its processing client side. That means when a client wants to do a find, or show the result of a calculation, the data necessary to do the action is transferred from the server to the client and the client calculates the result. This is handy because you don’t need super powerful servers and the amount of load put on the server itself is reduced. But there’s a tradeoff, in some circumstances, it can also be extraordinarily painful. If a lot of data needs to be moved, the t

Triggering a server-side script Part I

FileMaker does most of its processing client side. That means when a client wants to do a find, or show the result of a calculation, the data necessary to do the action is transferred from the server to the client and the client calculates the result. This is handy because you don’t need super powerful servers and the amount of load put on the server itself is reduced. But there’s a tradeoff, in some circumstances, it can also be extraordinarily painful. If a lot of data needs to be moved, the t

Running an iPad database as a Kiosk

Doug Alder of HomeBase Software out of Vancouver, BC posted an excellent explanation of locking down an iOS device to use an FM Go database in “Kiosk” mode, using the Accessibility options. While you’re there, check out his FileMaker Timeline (which isn’t working in Chrome for me, but in Firefox it looks great). <a href="http://wingforward.net/running-an-ipad-database-as-a-kiosk" rel='nofollow external'>Source</a>

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