Hello.

I am fairly new to Filemaker, but I am buying FMD6 in a couple of days with a view to creating solutions for a specific market.

Anyway, I wonder if anyone can recommend a good book for Filemaker Developer 6, I notice some for 5.5 are mentioned here, but do those cover version 6? is there much difference?

I am creating a multi db relational database and so would be interested in that kind of book.

thanks for any advice.

Are you sure you need developer? Unless you are creating mostly single-user solutions (not on a network), you may never take advantage of its additional features.

So far, I haven't seen any books specifically for FM version 6. A couple of good ones that are still applicable from version 5.x are the ones by Colombre and Price 'Special Edition using Filemaker Pro 5' and the one by Moyer and Bowers 'Advanced Filemaker Pro 5.5 Techniques for Developers.'

Since there isn't much difference between versions after 5.0, these books are still worth having. The main new things in version 6 are its folder import and XML capabilities. So, these aren't covered in the above books.

Filemaker Developer 6 is just Filemaker Pro 6 with the Script Debugger and Database Design Report functionality. Any book on Filemaker Pro 6 will basically cover Filemaker Developer 6.

The Developer Tool is a just a utility app which allows you to create runtimes, rename solutions, prevent modifications to files, etc. It does NOT contain any Filemaker functionality. There are no 3rd party books on this specifically.

Personally I have seen little or nothing in Filemaker 6 to warrant it, although Filemaker 5.5 is well worth it!

Personally I have seen little or nothing in Filemaker 6 to warrant it, although Filemaker 5.5 is well worth it!

Are you referring to FM developer 6, or regular FM 6? I thought that the new constrain and extend found set options when doing finds, are important and have been desperately needed for a long time. Although, I err, haven't actually upgraded from 5.5 myself.

yeah, I'm pretty sure I need developer, I want to limit the menu bars accessable by the users and create stand alone versions of my solution. I have thought about it quite a lot because of the additional expense, and I am fairly certain!

of course, I won't know for sure until I have it installed and have been using it for a little while.

It's fairly difficult to know even if it will do all the thinsg I want to do from just web research.

Still, I'm sure it will come in useful somewhere!

thanks for these posts, I'll have a look at those books, my wife works in a bookshop so I get a discount

I'm getting FM6 because that's what's available at the moment... Also, I want my databases to work primarily in OS X - I don't know if 5.5 works in OSX ? Anyway, I'll probably be deploying a copy of Filemaker Pro with each installation of my Solution, so it might as well be as up to date as possible....

by the way, this is a great forum, and over the next few months I'm sure I'll be in here a hell of a lot!! So thanks in advance for all the assistance I'll get from here!