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Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions

By Steven H. Blackwell April 7, 2016

Hacking Your Own FileMaker Platform Solutions Should FileMaker Platform developers mount hacking attacks on their own solutions? At first glance, this may seem an odd question. But I believe that the answer is “Yes, we should.” Consider this. As developers we see our solutions from a totally different perspective than Threat Agents see them. Without practicing our own hacking skills, we can become blind to the vulnerabilities a Threat Agent can exploit to compromise the Confidentiality
- 1 comment
- 5,508 views
A Conversation About '2 Factor Authentication'

By Josh Ormond February 8, 2016

[ Edit: 3/16/2016 - With the help of some other people, we have been able to recover, or recreate some of the original images from original thread. ] Security is always a big topic when it involves data, or people, or possessions. Recently, over on the FileMaker Community, there was a very beneficial discussion regarding security. Unfortunately, that discussion was the victim of a necessary action...and was deleted. It was deleted, because the discussion was tied to a video that, as was det
- 1 comment
- 5,554 views

Thank you Steve Jobs

Shot of tequila and a lei at the bar, Hualalai, 10/5/2011 Source

John Sindelar

October 6, 2011

Easy Sorting of List Views, part 3

Ever since I posted part 2 of this series, I’ve been torn between, on the one hand, wanting to move on to other topics; and on the other, the realization that I wasn’t quite done with this one yet. So, here is what I expect will be my final posting, and final demo (dynamic list [...] Source

Kevin Frank

October 1, 2011

Skeleton Key - FileMaker - How To Article Published for TechNet Members

How To Article Featured in October Newsletter for FileMaker TechNet Mark Richman, President of Skeleton Key, was both flattered and happy to contribute his FileMaker “How To” article, Replicating an External Authentication Environment for Development, in the October, 2011 issue of the FileMaker Technical Network e-Newsletter that circulated today. read more Source

Skeleton Key

September 30, 2011

Performance Tuning

Random Set of Records (optimized)

I noticed that one of the articles updated in the official FileMaker Knowledge Base on September 23, 2011 was explaining how to select a random set of records in a FileMaker database. I was wondering how fast the currently recommended technique is and whether Ican make it faster with the help of FM Bench. I tried to apply it to a set of 50,000 records of randomly generated data. Then I made it much faster… Read more in the original article

HOnza in Performance Tuning

September 29, 2011

Skeleton Key - Aggressive Hiring Initiative Successful for Continued Growth

Aggressive Hiring Initiative Successful for Continued Growth Skeleton Key has made significant progress in meeting its hiring goals in Q3 with the addition of Technology Consulting division and Application Development division. <p><a href="http://www.skeletonkey.com/images/Blog/EricChris_polaroid_2011-09-22.jpg"> Source

Skeleton Key

September 22, 2011

Easy Sorting of List Views, part 2

Well, I thought I’d said everything I had to say on this subject, but yesterday afternoon I noticed a glaring omission in part 1′s demo — what happens if the user manually unsorts the found set? The sort indicator doesn’t disappear the way a good little sort indicator should. Fortunately this is easily remedied, thanks [...] Source

Kevin Frank

September 22, 2011

Modding a Zync’ed File

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

John Sindelar

September 20, 2011

Easy Sorting of List Views, part 1

Earlier this year, I posted a three-part series on Portal Sorting, and part 2 focused on dynamically sorting a portal when a column heading was clicked. Well, with just a few tweaks, this technique can be applied to dynamic sorting of found sets, and of course the most likely place to employ something like this [...] Source

Kevin Frank

September 18, 2011

London Calling

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. Source

John Sindelar

September 16, 2011

Performance Tuning

Custom Function Optimized to Evaluate Hundreds Times Faster

Two weeks ago I wrote an article about a FileMaker custom function I needed to preprocess some data imported from the web. I used this custom function in an auto-enter calculation to immediately preprocess the data while being imported. I created a server-side script that does the import every morning. But when I discovered that the import was taking over an hour every day, I saw it deserves some optimization. I used FM Bench Detective and optimized the custom function to evaluate up to several

HOnza in Performance Tuning

September 14, 2011

Examples & Tutorials

FileMaker Custom Function for HTML Entities

I needed to decode HTML encoded text in FileMaker. I thought this must have been done many times before, so I tried to search for a suitable custom function at BrianDunning.com and FMFunctions.com. After checking few functions I found one that seemed pretty good... Read the whole article

HOnza in Examples & Tutorials

September 14, 2011

Locks, Keys, and Lock-Picking

Locks, Keys, and Lock-Picking By Steven H. Blackwell Platinum Member Emeritus, FileMaker Business Alliance Recently, an experienced FileMaker Pro developer posed a question on developer group list about the behavior of FileMaker Pro files. Paraphrased, that question is as follows: We've come across a small, but possible, security issue.   If a user has clicked the "Remember my password in my keychain",  anyone can log in to the FMP system if the person has access t

Steven H. Blackwell

September 10, 2011

Birthday Challenges, part 2

Dear FileMaker Hacks, In my personnel database, how can I find all birthdays in a given range, for example, between September 8 and November 15? — Perplexed in Peoria Dear Perplexed, You do come up with some interesting questions. As I recall from our previous correspondence, you are in the US, where dates are formatted [...] Source

Kevin Frank

September 8, 2011

Birthday Challenges, part 1

Dear FileMaker Hacks, My personnel database has a scripted routine that locates all employees with birthdays in the current month, like so: When I sent a copy of the database to our sister organization in Australia, the scripted routine did not function properly for them. Could it have something to do with their computer expecting [...] Source

Kevin Frank

September 7, 2011

Simple Truncated Displaying of Long Lists (+more)

Displaying a long list of items on a layout generally means that the majority of the list is hidden from the user until they click into the field, with no feedback as to the size of the list. This article details a nice technique you can use to present the same list in a truncated style that gives live feedback on the number of items. Read the Full Article Here…

Daniel Wood

August 24, 2011

Rotation in Go and GoZync

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. Source

John Sindelar

August 19, 2011

The Search for Fast Aggregates - Implementation & Results

In the final part of this two part series, we go into a little more detail about the aggregate technique we developed in the first article. We also carry out a number of comparison aggregate tests and present the results. We also try to address some of the limitations of this technique and ways in which you could try to work around these… Read the Full Article Here…

Daniel Wood

August 15, 2011

The Search for Fast Aggregates - Trial & Error

In the first of a two part series, we begin the search for a faster way to perform aggregates in FileMaker. We cover why aggregates can be quite a costly operation - especially on wide area networks - and use that as a jumping off point for finding a faster method. Read the Full Article Here…

Daniel Wood

August 15, 2011

Piece work, product, or pipe dream?

I’m not sure either, but this is what we’re Jason’s working on: Source

John Sindelar

August 12, 2011

Did You Hear What I Said?

July 26th 2011 Did You Hear What I Said? By Steven H. Blackwell News media on both sides of the Atlantic were all agog last week over the alleged hacking of cellular phone voice mail accounts of politicians and crime victims by reporters of the now defunct News of the World tabloid. These are serious matters, and much of the coverage has been appropriately professional. Other media coverage however can be characterized in my view as lurid and as having an undertone of “Lo

Steven H. Blackwell

July 26, 2011

DevCon Schedule in iCal

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. Source

John Sindelar

July 22, 2011

Claris Engage

5 reasons for not attending FileMaker DevCon

To attend or not to attend? That’s the question I am asking myself every year since 2002 when I attended my first FileMaker DevCon. I have attended 8 DevCons so far, and skipped one. I have identified the following 5 possible reasons for not attending: Attending DevCon costs a lot of money Traveling to DevCon costs a lot of money Staying at DevCon's location costs a lot of money Going to DevCon takes a lot of time when I cannot do my regular work The sessions

HOnza in Claris Engage

July 18, 2011

Maintenance & Troubleshooting

Mac OS X 10.7 Lion – Upgrade or Wait?

Everyone is excited about Lion. Even though many new features on Mac OS X 10.7 are giving us improvements we kept asking for since 10.1, Apple has again succeeded in giving all the new features the strong essence of innovation that makes us unable to hesitate to install and try Lion out as soon as we are able to. But we are also afraid. What if some important apps stop working? Read more in my article. Alredy updated with links to other resources and opinions...

HOnza in Maintenance & Troubleshooting

July 15, 2011