Leaderboard

This post has been incorporated in to our site's guidelines. https://fmforums.com/guidelines

Don't touch FileMaker again. Hire somebody who know what they are doing.

Ya know, when you rate people with negatives, they will stop assisting you. Wouldn't you in their place? Why should we risk responding just to get slapped for it if you simply don't care for our response? You are judging whether our answers are right or wrong and you know very little about FileMaker. Would you let a podiatrist take out your gall bladder? No - you listen to those that know what you want to know. Soon, at this rate, you will have nobody left to help you. By the way, I am not responding ... I'm afraid to. Also, don't tell people to read the post again ... that is insulting. People here READ the posts. Your posts have been almost impossible to understand at all. That is not our fault. It is yours.

No, you can't have pure separation. And yes, you might have to make more changes in the data file if your solution is still young (and occassionally throughout) but that is easily off-set by time saved not migrating. I've designed some large systems using both separation and not. Here are the reasons that *I* prefer using separation and these reasons probably aren't the top reasons at all - but they are important to ME: Transfer of Data (the best solution is NOT moving data) If you use single file and design in another version (so Users can continue working in the served version) you have to migrate the data from the served file to your file and that can take hours even when scripted. Every time you move the data, you risk something going wrong and the likelihood increases each time you migrate. With separation, the data file remains untouched. Import Mapping (unsafe and time consuming) Scripting the automatic export and import on every table in the single file solution takes time as well. Every export and import script must be opened and checked because you have added (and probably deleted) fields. You can make a mistake here. And even if you don’t, the 'spontaneous import map' bug might get you. It is very time-consuming and difficult, dragging a field around in the import maps (FM making it very difficult with the poor import mapping design). No data export/import or mapping with separation. Data Integrity (and User Confidence at risk) When working in a single served solution, you risk records not being created when scripts run (if you are in field options calculation dialog), triggers firing based upon incorrect tab order that you just changed on a layout, and a slew of insidious underground breaks most that you will never see until much later. By then, all you will know is that it broke but not why. You risk jangled nerves and lost faith of your Users who might experience these breaks, data loses, screen flashes and other oddities. A User’s faith in your solution is pure gold and it should not be risked needlessly. External Source Sharing (provide ‘fairly’ clean tables for integration needs) It has been discussed many times … why we have to wade through a hundred table occurrence names (particularly if using separation model anchor-buoy of which I'm not a fan anyway) and also have to view hundreds of calculations (which external sources don’t want). It can be a nightmare. Much better with a data file – where calculations are kept to minimum and the table occurrences are easily identifiable base relationships and easy to exchange with MySQL, Oracle and others. If FM made calculations another layer (separate from data) then FileMaker would go to the top instantly … rapid development front-end and true data back end. But I digress … Crashing (potential increases when Developing in live system) Working in developer mode (scripts with loops, recursive custom functions), means that there is higher likelihood of crashing the solution when designing - admit it. If you crash the solution while in the schema, it is (usually) instant toast but regardless, you SHOULD ALWAYS replace it immediately (run Recover, export the data and import it into a new clean clone). With separation model, you never design live so it is moot. No trashed file means no recover and no migration. You are designing as we all should … on a Development box. Transferring Changes (even if careful) Working in live single file system, a change you think is small might have unseen and unexpected side-effects. That potential danger increases as the complexity of your solution grows. This is why we all should beta test changes before going live. But even if careful and even if you design on Developer copy and test it, document your changes and then re-create those changes into the served file (eliminating the data migration portion completely), you risk mistyping a field name, script variable, not setting a checkbox and so forth. Separation also can risk error because it can mean adding a field or calculation to the Data file but it is very small percentage of the changes we make (except very early); most changes are layout objects, triggers, conditional formatting…UI changes. It is more difficult to replicate layout work between files. And most changes in the data file occur before the solution is even made live the first time. Same Developer experience (Developer works in single file regardless) In separation, all layouts and scripts reside in the UI no matter how many Data files are linked as data sources. The only time you have to even open the Data file is to work in Manage Database. Added ... or set permissions. Fewer Calculations (means faster solution?) If one decides to go with Separation, the goal is no calculations or table occurrences in the data file but that goal is not obtainable. Since this is your goal, you try to find alternate methods to achieve the same thing to avoid adding calculations (which you should do anyway). You will use more conditional formatting, Let() to declare merge variables, rearranging script logic to handle some of it … there are many creative options. And once you start down that path, you will find that you need fewer calculations than you ever imagined. Separation model means I can work safely on the UI aside and quickly replace it while leaving the data intact with the least risk. Some calcs need a nudge to update and privileges must be established in the data file as well – those are the only drawbacks I have experienced with it. I have never placed the UI on local stations. I have heard (from trusted sources) that it increases speed. There was a good discussion on separation model here: https://fmdev.filema...age/65167#65167 Everyone has their opinion. I did not want to go with separation and I was forced into it the first time (by a top Developer working with me, LOL). I am glad I was. Once I understood its simplicity and that everything happens in the UI, I was hooked. Of course if it is a very small solution for one person then I won't separate but for a growing business with data being served, I will certainly use it. Next time that, in your single-file solution, you go through a series of crashes because of network (hardware) problems and you have to migrate every night, think about separation. Next time you need to work in field definitions but can't because Users are in the system, think about separation. Most businesses are constantly changing and that means almost constantly making improvements to a solution. You can NOT guarantee that changes in Manage Database or scripts will not affect Users in the system. Risk is simply not in my dictionary when it comes to data. Enough can go wrong even when we take all precautions. I don't dance with the devil nor do I run with scissors. Joseph, I think it would be easier to start from scratch because it makes you re-think each piece. And, as you learn, you will find better ways of re-creating each portion of it. I would also wait until the next version arrives to take full advantage of its new features. It won't be long now.

Actually, there is a way to measure it - but it takes quite a lot of work... MeasureBeforeDisplay.fmp12

Hey everyone, I love how open the Filemaker Community is, and how much is shared freely, so I wanted to contribute. I created a database to manage SVG icons. The icons are all royalty free provided by Syncfusion and there are about 4,000 icons, all with search tags to make finding them super easy. You can find out more about the file, and download it here: http://www.indats.com/2015/06/15/indats-icon-manager/ Please let me know any feedback you have on the file, thanks!

Hi All, I am happy to present the FmDynamix project, including cfCall () and #load (), my new 2 custom functions .... In an interest to further test FileMaker more and more ... I tried to give you a presentation of this new method, as explicit as possible, I hope to have succeeded ! You have the description and the presentation here, and take before the file demo : fmx_FmDynamix_Presentation.fmp12 I hope that this file will give you the urge to see this method, I do not think I have view of similar thing I hope that this "modularity" will please you and will give some ideas, feel free to test and give me your comments ! Thanks for your interest Agnès ( and thank you to Google Translate too )

I was running some speed tests with EasySync recently and was surprised to see how long a sync took after I added a few images to the the sample record set that ships with EasySync. It was taking over 5 min. to download those records from FileMaker server which was installed on the same machine as FileMaker Pro. A competitor's product was doing the same sync in under 10 seconds. The interesting part was that all records in the sync took much longer to process, once the images were added. In other words, the fact that I added some images to record #1 made records #2-100 take exponentially longer to process. So, I did some digging and found that the entire payload was being saved to a local script $variable in the Pull Payload script. When the payload included images, that $variable was really large; too large to all fit into FileMakers available memory. This caused the number of page faults to increase by about 600,000 while the records were being processed. My theory was that if I could reduce the amount of data store in memory (variables) at once, then I could reduce the time it takes to process a large payload. It turns out this basic concept worked. The sync which previously took over 5 min. now only took 30 seconds! (and page faults barely increased at all) I've attached a file with these changes that prove my theory. I ended up saving each segment returned from the server to a new record in the EasySync table, then only extracting a single record at a time from the payload, reading from each payload segment as necessary. NOTE: the attached file is a proof of concept ONLY! Please do not use it as-is in a production; it has not been tested and will probably fail in all but the most obvious circumstances. Also, my system crashed once while I was working on this file, so it's been closed improperly at least once. DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION! I think I may start a fork of this project which includes this change; I'll post back here if I do. FM_Surveys_Mobile_v1r3_DSMOD.fmp12

2016_fmp_iconPack_v2.zip

This post is simply to make others aware of a usage of placeholder text that I haven't seen mentioned before. We have situation where, when opening a popover to create a new record, the new record isn't created until the User enters data. However, there are a few auto-enter fields which are defaults and they do not display. This is confusing to Users since, from their perspective, that data should already be there - they don't fill it in unless they want to change the value.! I always keep a field (global) called PLACEHOLDER. It is set to auto-enter ( replace ) with: If ( not IsEmpty ( Self ) ; "" ) and I use it for displaying calculation results on layouts when merge fields will not work but this usage is a bit different ... The PLACEHOLDER field can help with displaying these default auto-enters. No record has been created yet (and may not be if User cancels) but I have set those field's placeholder text to their auto-enter calculation and I've set the placeholder text style to same font color as their regular text. Now default entries display. BTW, this works nicely since when User enters the field, the value remains until the user starts to type, at which time the placeholder text disappears and the user entry displays.

This feature is huge. Now that FileMaker 14 has been released here's the not-secret-anymore topic of my devcon presentation: Thursday, July 23 | FileMaker Developer Conference 2015

Another fun option. If you want to get away from the overhead of the conditional formatting. Thanks to @jbante for posting this one. http://uxmovement.com/forms/why-infield-top-aligned-form-labels-are-quickest-to-scan/ I've been playing around with this idea for just over a week now. Noticing layouts built this way look less busy, but still provides all of the info a user needs to know what data in a field. Something that can be lost if the label is hidden. Google does this a lot in their interface ( hiding interface objects and menus ), to the point where it's not intuitive, and you can't find the magic spot for where the menu is hidden.

So, I finally took the plunge and upgraded the site to the new forum engine. I am planning to work the weekend to restore site features that are currently disabled. There may be times when the site goes unresponsive or generates an error. I already have a few trouble tickets pending with the site developers to provide a remedy. I wish to thank the Site Advertisers for making this possible, but do please forgive the irony as I don't have all the ad spaces working just yet and I hope to restore them as soon as possible. - Having to crash course some html/php/css logic. Think I'll need another cuppa I hope to have some site instructions as things have changed a bit. One thing you may have noticed is that before we had usernames and Display Names the site only allowed one so we elected Display Names as they were already public facing - so you will need to login using your Display Name or your email address, or if already configured Facebook or Twitter (hope to include other oAuth login methods in the future ) I'll post more in this topic when there is something you should know.

I suggest that every act which could have been optimised but wasn't is poor practice. It is not poor practice because of principle but rather because of: If you let slide optimisation in this area on 2,500 records, the next time you'll be inclined to think letting slide with 3,000 records is fine. It is a slippery slope which breeds sloppiness and drags a good solution down into less than ideal. We can not always predict the environment and venue our solutions will be fired under. It may be fine over LAN but when accessed from an iPad with low-grade provider, the process which only took a blink over LAN now takes 4 seconds and THAT is a LONG time to a User. As for me, if I go to a website which takes more than 6 seconds to load, I move on. Users today will not tolerate slop. Compounded, each of the blow offs which were small, now each contribute to network traffic and begin to crawl. Do not give in. Optimize everything you do at all times. It is one of the few things you can control and it is the best investment in your solution. You may think you are only saving one second but multiply that over six months, performed by 25 users and you see clearly where this is going. Do not fall for the disease of sloppiness. Commit to excellence in your work. And yes, it is only my opinion because my opinion is the only one I have to share. And yes, I'm an obnoxious idealist. If that is the worst I am called, I'll take it.

Your "Maior Grid Spacing" is setted to 1 point. You need to change it to something like 10 or more. Or you need to unchek the box: View >> Grid >> Show Grid

Charity, Since the best experience is if the end user has all the data they need local to their iPad and not rely on connectivity you may try to do this: Create your solution in ONE file with multiple tables one table for your catalog another other table for your customer data entry. If your catalog only changes every so often that is fine you can push out a new version to the end user to replace their database with all the catalog data. If they only need to add new customers and not look up historical customers then you can essentially have them email data (export as TAB/CSV/or EXCEL ) from the customer table for you to import in to your own file, every night. (not ideal but its a work around) Since cost is a concern for you please look at this http://fmeasysync.com, its a free open source framework for syncing your database - it may be a bit overwhelming at first but I am confident that you can get there! - Charity every year at the developer conference we (old salts) wonder where the "next generation" of FileMaker Developers are coming from, if you have a passion for this and accept the challenges head on, you most likely will be reciprocating your learnt knowledge and wisdom in short time to other newbies jumping in to the fray. - What goes into the External Data Sources - really depends on where the files will ultimately be deployed, if two files are hosted then they would use relative paths: file:MyDatabse.fmp12 if one file is local to a device then it needs the fully qualified URL path with either the PUBLIC IP address, or a domain name, if using a 10.0.x.x or 192.168.x.x this is an internal IP address and wouldn't be accessible out side your environment. fmnet:/192.168.10.10/MyDatabase.fmp12 fmnet:/fms.somehostingcompany.com/MyDatabase.fmp12 if you would like to see how can be access when hosted please send me a private message and I could host a sample file for you that you can test with. Stephen

I know this is lower priority than some of the other wishes but I can't help but just mention it ... If we go to Manage > Themes, we see a list of themes loaded in this file and it also indicates how many layouts are assigned to that theme. But it would be nice if we knew which layouts were assigned to a theme and even had the ability to ... yeah I know ... probably never ... but to GTRR (so-to-speak) to those layouts or see a list of them at least. Manage > Layouts certainly has room to list its theme along with the table and menu set. If nothing else, this would make life easier for us. When a solution has 150 layouts, it can take quite a bit of time to go through them all to find the few layouts assigned to a theme needlessly. And each theme (even themes unused), load all definitions and take up quite a bit of space. For instance, a recent example - file had 13 themes but on 3 were used. By converting them all to the single theme, I saved 1.7MB right off the top and it took 15 minutes. So a way to quickly jump to layouts according to their theme would be helpful. Or ... am I missing something here? Are there ways of seeing a list of layout names per theme? Thanks everyone for listening and hopefully providing a solution of which I was unaware. Otherwise I'll provide FileMaker feedback about it. Also, there is a Custom Themes forum for FM12 but there isn't one for FM13. It might be nice to remove the 'FM12' portion from the forum title so we can put FM13 questions there as well ... or ... create another forum for Custom Themes in FM13. I prefer the former. Thank you!!

It's perfectly find, even preferable, to keep your process split out into separate scripts. There are plenty of arguments for this from different sources, but I personally think that the best reason is that human working memory is one of the biggest bottlenecks in our ability to write software. It's dangerous to put more functionality in one script (or calculation, including custom functions) than you can keep track of in your head. If you find yourself writing several comments in your scripts that outline what different sections of the script do to help you navigate the script, consider splitting those sections of the script into separate sub-scripts, using the outline comments for the sub-script names. If your parent scripts start to read less like computer code and more like plain English because you're encapsulating functionality into well-named sub-scripts, you're doing something right. (The sub-scripts don't have to be generalized or reusable for this to be a useful practice. Those are good qualities for scripts, but do the encapsulation first.) I think you'd be better off if the scripts shared information with script parameters and results instead of using global variables, if you can help it. When you set a global variable, you have to understand what all your other scripts will do with it; and when you use the value in a global variable, you have to understand all the other scripts that may have set it. This has the potential to run up against the human working memory bottleneck very fast. With script parameters and results, you only ever have to think about what two scripts do with any given piece of information being shared: the sub-script and its parent script. Global variables can also lead to unintended consequences if the developer is sloppy. If one script doesn't clear a variable after the variable is no longer needed, another script might do the wrong thing based on the value remaining in that global variable. With script parameters, results, and local variables, the domain of possible consequences of a programming mistake are contained to one script. I might call it a meta best practice to use practices that limit the consequences of developer error. Globals are necessary for some things; just avoid globals if there are viable alternative approaches. There is a portability argument for packing more functionality into fewer code units — fewer big scripts might be easier to copy from one solution into another than more small scripts. Big scripts are also easier to copy correctly, since there are fewer dependencies to worry about than with several interdependent smaller scripts that achieve the same functionality. For scripts, this is often easy to solve with organization, such as by putting any interdependent scripts in the same folder with each other. Custom functions don't have folders, though. For custom functions, another argument for putting more in fewer functions is that one complicated single function can be made tail recursive, and therefore can handle more recursive calls than if any helper sub-functions are called. This ValueSort function might be much easier to work with if it called separate helper functions, but I decided that for this particular function, performance is more important.

Do an ExecuteSQL to do a quick select, if that comes up empty you can skip the real FM find. It's important to understand though that "Set Error Capture On" does not prevent the error from *happening*. The only thing it does is hide the error from the user so that you can handle it silently. If you run the same script in your debugger you will see that FM also reports the error.

The trick is to use the fmsadmin command line and that syntax is the same on Windows and Mac. So the only challenge is in calling that fmsadmin command line from your favourite OS scripting language: shell script / AppleScript on OSX and batch file / VBscript / PowerShell on Windows. Below is a sample VBscript that automates shutting down FMS in a safe way. It should contain enough pointers to do the reverse. ' Author: Wim Decorte ' Version: 2.0 ' Description: Uses the FileMaker Server command line to disconnect ' all users And close all hosted files ' ' This is a basic example. This script is not meant as a finished product, ' its only purpose is as a learning & demo tool. ' ' This script does not have full Error handling. ' For instance, it will break if there are spaces in the FM file names. ' The script also does not handle infinite loops in disconnecting clients ' or closing files. ' ' This script is provided as is, without any implied warranty or support. Const WshFinished = 1 q = Chr(34) ' the " character, needed to wrap around paths with spaces '-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ' Change these variables to match your setup theAdminUser = "" theAdminPW = "" pathToSAtool = "C:Program FilesFileMakerFileMaker ServerDatabase Serverfmsadmin.exe" '-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SAT = "cmd /c " & q & pathToSAtool & q & " " ' watch the trailing space callFMS = SAT If Len(theAdminUser) > 0 Then callFMS = callFMS & " -u " & theAdminUser End If If Len(theAdminPW) > 0 Then callFMS = callFMS & " -p " & theAdminPW End If listClients = callFMS & " list clients" disconnectClients = callFMS & " disconnect client -y" listfiles = callFMS & " list files -s" closeFiles = callFMS & " close file " stopServer = callFMS & " stop server -y -t 15" ' hook into the Windows shell Set sh = WScript.CreateObject("wscript.shell") ' get a list of all clients and force kick them off clientIDs = getCurrentClients() clientCount = UBound(clientIDs) ' loop through the clients and kick them off If clientCount > 0 Then fullCommand = disconnectClients Set oExec = sh.Exec(fullCommand) ' give FMS some time and then requery the list of clients Do Until oExec.Status = WshFinished WScript.Sleep 50 Loop Do Until clientCount = 0 WScript.Sleep 1000 Debug.WriteLine "Waiting for clients to disconnect..." clientIDs = getCurrentClients() clientCount = UBound(clientIDs) Loop End If ' get list of files and close them fileIDs = getCurrentFiles() fileCount = UBound(fileIDs) ' loop through the files and close them If fileCount > 0 Then Do Until fileCount = 0 fullCommand = closeFiles & fileIDs(0) & " -y" Set oExec = sh.Exec(fullCommand) ' give FMS some time and then requery the list of files Do Until oExec.Status = WshFinished WScript.Sleep 50 Loop fileIDs = getCurrentFiles() fileCount = UBound(fileIDs) Loop End If ' all clients and files stopped ' shut down the database sever (does not stop the FMS service!) fullCommand = stopServer Set oExec = sh.Exec(fullCommand) Do Until oExec.Status = WshFinished WScript.Sleep 50 Loop ' done, exit the script Set sh = Nothing WScript.Quit ' ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Function getCurrentClients() tempCount = 0 Dim tempArray() Set oExec = sh.Exec(listClients) ' in case there are no clients... If oexec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream Then Redim temparray(0) ' read the output of the command Do While Not oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream strText = oExec.StdOut.ReadLine() strText = Replace(strtext, vbTab, "") Do Until InStr(strtext, " ") = 0 strText = Replace (strtext, " ", " ") Loop If InStr(strText, "Client ID User Name Computer Name Ext Privilege") > 0 OR _ InStr(strText, "ommiORB") > 0 OR _ InStr(strText, "IP Address Is invalid Or inaccessible") > 0 Then ' do nothing Redim temparray(0) Else tempClient = Split(strtext, " ") tempCount = tempCount + 1 Redim Preserve tempArray(tempCount) tempArray(tempCount-1) = tempClient(0) End If Loop getCurrentClients = tempArray End Function Function getCurrentFiles() tempCount = 0 Dim tempArray() Set oExec = sh.Exec(listfiles) ' in case there are no files... If oexec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream Then Redim temparray(0) ' read the output of the command Do While Not oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream strText = oExec.StdOut.ReadLine() strText = Replace(strtext, vbTab, "") Do Until InStr(strtext, " ") = 0 strText = Replace (strtext, " ", " ") Loop If InStr(strText, "ID File Clients Size Status Enabled Extended Privileges") > 0 OR _ InStr(strText, "ommiORB") > 0 OR _ InStr(strText, "IP Address Is invalid Or inaccessible") > 0 OR _ Left(strtext, 2) = "ID" Then ' do nothing Redim temparray(0) Else tempFile = Split(strtext, " ") status = LCase(tempFile(4)) If status = "normal" Then tempCount = tempCount + 1 Redim Preserve tempArray(tempCount) tempArray(tempCount - 1) = tempFile(1) & ".fp7" End If End If Loop getCurrentFiles = tempArray End Function

Why not load all their information into one global variable and then you can always parse out that info since you should only ever have one row returned. ExecuteSQL ( "SELECT ID, firstname, lastname, title, date_hire FROM Staff WHERE accountName = ?" ; "¶" ; "" ; Session::accountName ) Then you can use GetValue ( ) to parse out specific information.

This is kind of janky, but you have to insert in a script step that guarantees no error code thrown (like "Show All Records") and then exit the script using the "Exit Script" step. ie. If Get(lastError) > 0 action for failed find Show All Records Exit Script Else action for successful find End If If you have multiple "Perform Find"s, make sure you add the "If Get(lastError) > 0" right after the Perform Find and then "Show All Records" and "Exit Script" steps after your other script steps but before the "End If" or "Else" script step. This suppresses the error in the schedule section of FMS

The two main schools of thought for passing multiple script parameters are return-delimited values and name-value pairs — the choice is a matter of taste, whether you prefer array or dictionary data structures. Both approaches have solutions for dealing with delimiters in the data. For return-delimited values, you can use the Quote function to escape return characters, and Evaluate to extract the original value: this standard. As long as you have a function to define a name-value pair in a parameter (# ( name ; value)) and another function to pull specific values back out again (#Get ( parameters ; name )), it works, and all variations should behave the same way. Any other supporting functions are purely for convenience, and probably can be re-implemented for whatever representation syntax you want. So I'd write: Quote ( "parameter 1") & ¶ & Quote ( "parameter 2¶line 2" ) will give you the parameter: "parameter 1" "parameter 2¶line 2" and you can retrieve the parameters: Evaluate ( GetValue ( Get ( ScriptParameter ) ; 2 ) ) with the result: parameter 2 line 2 Every name-value pair approach worth using has it's own approach for escaping delimiters. In my own opinion, XML-style syntax is unnecessarily verbose. My personal preference when working with name-value pairs these days is "FSON" syntax (think "FileMaker-native JSON"), which is where the parameters are formatted according to the variable declaration syntax of a Let function: $parameter1 = "value 1"; $parameter2 = "value 2¶line2"; I only consider name-value pair functions practical when the actual syntax is abstracted away with custom functions. Once you do that, the mechanics of working with the different types should be interchangeable, such as any name-value pair function set that matches # ( "parameter1" ; "value 1" ) & # ( "parameter2" ; "value 2¶line 2" ) and: #Get ( Get ( ScriptParameter ) ; "parameter2" ) I only have 2 requirements for any parameter-passing syntax: 1. It can encode it's own delimiter syntax as data in a parameter, and therefore any text value (already mentioned in this thread), and 2. it can arbitrarily nest parameters, i.e., I can include multiple sub-parameters within a single parameter. The requirements tend to work hand-in-hand with each other. If I can do those two things, I can construct everything else I will ever need within that framework.

Hi Charity, We all deal with wanting to eliminate the display of buttons, checkboxes, drop-down calendars and such on that last row when Allow Creation is in effect. Instead of having to eliminate the objects individually, you can accomplish it all with conditional formatting AND make it clear to your User that they click the last row to add a new record. Here is how: Create a text box with the words [ Add new record here ... ] Make the background transparent. Color of text does not matter Resize the text box to same size as single portal row Format the text box as follows (using conditional formatting) First entry: Formula = not IsEmpty ( the primary key from the portal table occurrence ). Then below select ‘more formatting’ and set the font size to custom and 500. Second entry: Formula = IsEmpty ( the primary key from the portal table occurrence ). And below set the text to white and the background to black as example. You can set it anything you wish. Select this text box and Arrange > Bring to Front and place it over your top portal row. This one text box hides checkboxes, drop-down calendars, buttons, lines on empty fields, etc only on the empty row and also provides a clean row in which to provide your message. I use it on all Allow Creation portals - just by changing the ID referenced within the conditional format portion.

No, you wouldn't. You will see why in a moment. In order to produce a return-delimited list of individual count of each value, you could do a calculation like this: While ( [ listOfTypes = YourSummaryField ; uniqueTypes = ValueListItems ( "" ; "YourValueListName" ) ; n = ValueCount ( uniqueTypes ) ; i = 1 ; result = "" ] ; i ≤ n ; [ result = List ( result ; ValueCount ( FilterValues ( listOfTypes ; GetValue ( uniqueTypes ; i ) ) ) ) ; i = i + 1 ] ; result ) This will return a list of counts of each value, in the order of the value list. But for a chart - esp. if it is a pie chart - you want to list the most frequent values first. This is very easy to do if you let the chart tool work as intended (i.e. chart the found set, with a data point for each group) and sort the records by type, descending with reorder based on a summary field that counts the records. Replicating this functionality in a calculation would be very difficult.

Could it be = C * Tan ( Radians ( A ) ) + B ?

I can finally report resolution of a longstanding problem, in hopes that it might be useful to someone else. The short version of my client’s sad saga, is that container documents in secure external storage were damaged by the IT company’s monthly restarts of the FM Server VM for OS patches. Further troubleshooting determined that even restarting the FM Service would completely destroy the container documents. The documents were stored with all FM data on drive E. New test databases on Drive E experienced the same fate, where server or service restarts damaged the container documents. Further testing showed that a fresh copy of the same test database, when installed on Drive C, survived restarts with all container documents intact. New testing on Drive G reproduced the same problems as on Drive E. The client’s IT company created a new VM, and we installed using the same setup as on the production system: OS and FM Server on Drive C, Data on E, Backups on G. The same problems occurred on restart, i.e. all container documents damaged beyond any possible access. Next we uninstalled FMS 16 and installed FMS 17 on the tester VM, and discovered during configuration that container document storage was not allowed nested in Drive E; instead, FMS would support only container storage at the root level of the external drive. For the first time, restarts did *not* damage the secure external container documents. And we had our clue: try the container folder at the root, not nested. Then we uninstalled FMS 17 on the tester VM, and reinstalled FM 16.0.v4, but this time we put the container documents at the root on Drive E. Voila! No container documents were harmed by any restarts. So the moral of the story is that secure external container storage, on FMS 16 on an external drive, needs to be in a folder at the root, not nested. So we went back to the production system, changed the location of the container folder, and no problems have occurred after any restarts. Thanks to all who helped along the way, and especially Wim Decorte. Environment: FMP 16.0.3 running on the client agency’s “RDS Farm”, a Windows 2008 VM. 35 users. Server 16.0.4 hosted on Windows Server 2012.

May I suggest that you work with this version going forward. It clarifies key field names, reorganizes the graph, and eliminates "portal" from any table or relationship names. The TO may be used in a portal. But labeling the TO as someThing_someThingPortal hides actual relational concepts. Test File DemoJOBR.fmp12

Couldn't this be much simpler? AppleScriptSpeak.fmp12

I would say that the idea is to append something to the values that do not end with the specified suffix. This is done in three steps: Protect the values that do end with the specified suffix from being modified in step 2 by substituting the suffix and the subsequent return with a reserved character (a); Substitute all remaining returns with a reserved character (b) and a return; this effectively appends (b) to all values that do not end with the specified suffix; Reverse step 1 . The result of this is indeed what you show in your post: [email protected] [email protected](b) [email protected] [email protected](b) [email protected] and when this is used to filter the original list, only the unmodified, wanted values remain. IIRC, I developed this idea out of something that Agnès Barouh did, I don't recall exactly what that was.

Try it this way = Let ( [ suffix = "gmail.com" ; list = Substitute ( YourField; ", " ; ¶ ) ; a = Char (57344) ; b = Char (57345) & ¶ ] ; FilterValues ( list ; Substitute ( list & ¶ ; [ suffix & ¶ ; a ] ; [ ¶ ; b ] ; [ a ; suffix & ¶ ] ) ) ) The result will be a return-separated list of the matching addresses: [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Stacey Chamblee has a modified FMEASY Signature that is moddified to work on windows. Here is the link if that helps. https://www.dropbox.com/s/p79mjv6g1rnypwn/FMEasySignature-Mac%26Windows.fmp12?dl=0

You can also style a single segment button bar as a button that does nothing with a calculation for the label, then style it to match a field or text on the layout and use it for layout level calculations with out the need to add a calculation to the schema.

"A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

I use 'Hide Object When'. Make two instances of the same field, One is editable, the other not. Give them complementary conditions for hiding and place them on top of each other. The non-enterable field is hidden when the value not = "No". The enterable field is hidden when the value = "No". Easy in FM 13...

Hi Wayne, If you change a CF, any stored calculations which use the CF will not change in response. You will need to change the calculation to unstored in calculation Storage Options (check Do Not store calculation results). Exit back to the layout then go back in and unchecking 'do not store'. It will then adjust. It is considered expected behaviour but it can catch folks off guard as you've discovered. I would suspect that the reason is simply because a stored calculation never re-calculates (unless a FIELD referenced within it changes) It is no different than regular stored field data.

Define the self-join as: Runs::idEntries_fk = Runs 2::idEntries_fk AND Runs::idDates_fk ≥ Runs 2::idDates_fk where Runs 2 is a new occurrence of the Runs table. Then define a calculation field (result is Number) = Count ( Runs 2::idRuns ) This will return the number of times the entry has appeared in the Runs table before (and including) the current week. Note that the count is discontinuous: if an entry appeared for 3 weeks, then missed 2 weeks and then reappeared for 4 weeks, the result will be the total 7 weeks.

http://www.rcconsulting.com/downloads.html At the bottom is Layout Optimizer. Not affiliated with RCC at all.

I do not see the need to 'down-rate' Rick for his question, liltbrockie. I have up-rated his post to offset it.

OK, first things first. 1. Someone needs to make an assessment of the level of sensitivity of the data that will be in these files and the level of adverse impact to the organization if a breach occurs. That assessment can guide your decisions about the level of security needed. 2. Create in each file a Privilege Set for each role that will be using the system. Assign that role the privileges it needs. 3. When #2 is completed--and it can be an on-going process--you can create Accounts for each person who will access the files. Those Accounts can be internal to the files, or they can be externally authenticated by Active Directory, Open Directory, or local server groups. Each Account is assigned to one of the Privilege Sets you created in #2. THis is done directly in the file for internal Accounts, or through matching Groups for external authentication. 4. This system then propagates through to all client types: FIleMaker Pro, FileMaker Pro, and WebDirect.™ When a user is challenged for credentials, the user enters his/her Account name and password. if authenticated, the user has access to the files with the privileges granted in Step #2. Finally, two other items. If your server is not robust, you won't be using WebDirect for more than 4 or 5 users. Larger WebDirect deployments require very robust servers. I would also recommend that you get someone who knows FileMaker Server and FileMaker security to come into your organization and give you some assistance before you deploy all of this. It sounds as if your situation is complex, and if you don;t do this correctly at the outset you're going to be plagued with issues. Steven

Well version 13 has been release but it is the same icon as v12. Since you can run multiple version on the Mac a visual distinction always helps. I have attached a new 'FM12DApp.icns' file to put into the apps content / resources folder. After you replace it you can 'get info' on the app, select the icon in the top left corner, then copy / paste to refresh the new icon. FM12DApp-blue.zip FM12DApp-green.zip FM12DApp-orange.zip

FileMaker Server will try to execute the SQL query on the server so you will only get the result. If that result is a record set of thousands of records then obviously that is what FMS will have to send you. There is one exception to FMS doing the query for you: if you have an open record in your session for the target table then FMS will send you the whole table so that your client can perform the query including the results of your open record. That is usually not a problem unless there are more than say 10,000 records in the target table. And the wait becomes exponentially longer the more records in the target table. An example: Table with 1,000,000 records. You construct a SQL query that results in 1 record. You have no open records in the target table (if other people have open records, that does not matter) --> FMS will do the query and return you the data for the one record. And it will be fast Table with 1,000,000 records. You construct a SQL query that results in 1 record. You DO have open records in the target table (if other people have open records, that does not matter) --> FMS will send you the data for ALL 1,000,000 records and your local copy of FMS will execute the SQL query. It will be very slow.

You must sort by the parent doctor first, then by the value. That will preserve the grouping AND provide a sorted list for each group. Then you only need to pick the correct record/s within that group. See the attached for one possible method to do that. MedianByParent.fp7.zip

One reason it's best to use records for things that are alike* is that records can easily be organized into sets (found or related) and these sets in turn are easy to sort and aggregate. Another point is that 5 is not a magic number. When you have 5 of something, you are likely to also have 3 or 4 and - eventually - 6 or 7. Now, records are very easy to add by the user, while adding fields requires the developer to change the schema. --- (*) Numbered fields are almost always an indication that you are dealing with several things that are alike.

You're doing fine with variables. As you've already figured out, lookups can only refer to one related source table each. If you need data for a given field to come from different sources in different situations, lookups are not for you. I can't remember the last time I used a lookup, and I've known some developers who advocate never using them as a matter of principle. Using variables in a scripted record creation process makes it easier to see what data is moving from where to where, in my experience. It can be confusing to maintain solutions where some data movement is defined in the schema (Manage Database...) and some is defined in scripts. The counterargument for managing all the data movement with variables in a script is that if you make a different script for creating the same records, you may wind up duplicating some of the business logic for what data comes from where that could be maintained in one place in the schema. If you find yourself doing that, I still recommend keeping the $variable based workflow. You can make one script that handles all the business logic the two operations have in common, and another for what's different about each operation. You can call the general- and special-purpose scripts in succession (I prefer this option), or make the general script a sub-script of the special-purpose scripts. Two other ways for moving data between tables on record creation are auto-enter calculations and between-table imports. Auto-enter calculations would let you put the logic in the schema, plus the flexibility to reference different related tables in different situations for the same field that you don't get with lookups. Imports can be faster that transferring data with $variables, though it can make for a slightly more difficult-to-maintain script, depending on the complexity of your data flows, and it doesn't accomodate transforming data during movement as well as auto-enter calculations or $variables.

Personally, I use three custom functions to assist with creating SQL statements. They would allow me to write the statement like this... ExecuteSQL ( "SELECT " & SQLField( Courses::__ID ) & " FROM " & & SQLTable( Courses::__ID ) & " WHERE " & SQLField( Courses::_CourseName ) & "=" & SQLQuote( "Git Training" ) ) Here are the custom functions: /* SQLField ( name ) PURPOSE: Return only the name of the field, without the relationship portion. As opposed to GetFieldName() which also returns the relationship. This is to be used in SQL queries to protect the field references from breaking if the field is renamed. The Quote() function allows us to reference "SQL reserved" field names without having to manually escape them. PARAMETERS: (field) field field to return name of DEPENDENCIES: FileMaker Pro 10+ REVISIONS: 2011-MAR-25 - Created by Kevin Frank http://www.filemakerhacks.com/?p=1065 2011-JUL-01 - Dan Smith [email protected] - renamed from GFN to SQLField - added to documentation section ####################################################################################################*/ Let ( [ a = GetFieldName ( field ) ; b = Substitute ( a ; "::" ; ¶ ) ] ; Quote ( GetValue ( b ; 2 ) ) ) /* SQLTable ( name ) PURPOSE: Return only the relationship portion of a field, quoted for use in a FileMaker SQL statement. PARAMETERS: (field) field field to get table occurence name from DEPENDENCIES: FileMaker Pro 10+ REVISIONS: 2011-JUL-01 - Created by Dan Smith [email protected] ####################################################################################################*/ Let ( [ a = GetFieldName ( field ) ; b = Substitute ( a ; "::" ; ¶ ) ] ; Quote ( GetValue ( b ; 1 ) ) ) /* SQLQuote ( name ) PURPOSE: Wrap text in single quotes, for use with SQL queries. The purpose of the Substitute is to "escape" any internally embedded apostrophes, e.g., O'Malley becomes 'O''Malley', which SQL will convert into O'Malley PARAMETERS: (text) text text to quote DEPENDENCIES: none REVISIONS: 2011-MAR-25 - Created by Kevin Frank http://www.filemakerhacks.com/?p=1065 2011-JUL-01 - Dan Smith [email protected] - renamed from Q to SQLQuote - added to documentation section ####################################################################################################*/ "'" & Substitute ( text ; "'"; "''" ) & "'"

I prefer name/value pairs. For a very simple reason: in an environment where I need to debug or continue work on somebody else's work it is very easy to see what parameters they are passing for what purpose instead of seeing a meaningless list of values for which I need to read the rest of the script to see where they are being used in. The added benefit is that you can pass optional parameters and pass the parameters in any order without having to cater for the exact order of the values. Bruce R has a nifty CF that automatically parses the passed parameters to variables in the receiving script. Regardless of the parameter passing technique that is being used, it is important to document the parameter expectations in the script. Be kind to yourself and others :)

Note also that this is not really a calculation as such; it's just a lookup of a pre-calculated result from a 7x7 matrix. In order to actually calculate the result, try = Let ( [ n = EndDate - StartDate + 1 ; w = Div ( n ; 7 ) ; r = Mod ( n ; 7 ) ; d = Mod ( StartDate + 1 ; 7 ) ] ; 6 * w + r - ( d + r > 6 ) )

For those that have field names that start with and underscore such as some do when identifying key fields, the new ExecuteSQL function does not play nice with them directly. Normal escapes with a prime or quotes do not work. You must use the Quote function. ExecuteSQL ( "SELECT " & Quote ( "_kp_ID" ) & " FROM table"; "," ; ¶ )

Here's an improved version that doesn't require the relationship to be sorted by category. UniqueValues11v2.zip