FM for large projects

[Paolo]

I've used FM for a while, developing and deploying a discrete amount of multi-user solutions of medium complexity.

Now I'm in trouble deciding if FM will be good for more complex solutions.

The main problems I've with FM are:

1. Performance of FM Server seem to be poor.

2. ScriptMaker seem to me a bad development environment when it comes to develop/debug complex FM solutions with a lot of scripts, expecially when they performs a lot of steps.

3. Filemaker let me do a lot of things very easily. However when it comes to do something FM is not expecially designed for, even simple thing becomes very complicated and can be achieved only trought tricks, hacks or workarounds.

Probably the only problem is that I just need to learn more about FM. Maybe FM is lacking of certain features...

What do you think about that ?

[LiveOak]

You need to give us some definition of how you are currently using FM. What platforms, versions.

1) I find it odd that you find the performance of server poor. Tell us about your server machine, hardware, OS, other applications being run on this machine.

2) I've written some quite complex solutions for people doing genome mapping and find that I don't even need the availble debugging tools and features. Good structured design and experience are the key.

3) Kind of depends upon what things you are trying to do. FM and other standard relational database are poor at structures such as linked lists. Screwdrivers make poor hammers.

Kind of hard to give you definitive answers without some clue of what you are trying to do and how well you have done it.

-bd

[jasonwood]

I've written some quite complex solutions for people doing genome mapping and find that I don't even need the availble debugging tools and features.

I find that the key to a good script is a good plan. I spent almost 200 hours writing a plan for my most recent project before touching FileMaker.

I find AppleWorks to be an awesome tool for writing a plan, because you can hit Command-R or Command-L to make a new line and set the margin one tab to the left or right (for nesting).

My plans list all fields (and options), all relationships, all value lists, all layouts, and all scripts.

When I'm done I go through it manually, following all the "perform script, external" commands and go back and forth between scripts in my head to make everything work.

Entering the code into FileMaker was easy as pie after that. There were hardly any bugs to work out, so now I'm concentrating on expanding functionality.

[Kurt Knippel]

In general I find that performance on Filemaker Server is on par with other database servers, though you are more limited in tweaking for your SPECIFIC environment. Of course Filemaker Server requires almost no tweaking in the first place.

Filemaker is not the most flexible development environment and you must live with certain limitations, but it is still far more cost effective than any other environment that I have worked with (and I have worked with lots of them). I regularly use a whole variety of 3rd party plug-ins to make development easier and/or extend the functionality of Filemaker.

Scripting is easier if you break it up into smaller pieces. I go by the rule that a sript longer than 20 lines needs to be broken up into multiple scripts. Also make sure that you follow good object-oriented design principals and make reusable script whereever possible.

[Paolo]

First, thank you for your replies. I'll try to be more accurate:

1) It's clear that performance depends on many factor: hardware, os, network and, most important, database design. I'm not trying to investigate the problem here because it implies the description of the whole configuration of things. I was just wondering if anyone have had problems with performance imputable to the filemaker engine only.

2) I dont agree. Even if complex solutions have been written it does'n mean that ScriptMaker is a good development environment.

It's not possible to copy-paste the code, comment it, edit in text-edit environment.

Importing/exporting scripts to reuse code is a very slow (tedious) process.

The only way to see find/sort settings is to print the script!! The only way to set find/sort settings is to perform the find/sort first!!! (assuming you alredy have the data to work with!!!)

3) I'll explain with some examples what I consider "workarounds". I'll try to explain, in my point of view, how simple things becames hard to do.

The use of variables in scripts is limited to global fields. It's not possible to assign a scope to a variable, it's not possible to organize them in data structures.

If I need to manage an array I need an external database file.

If I need to pass arguments between scripts in different files I have to create relationships to let the script in one file see the globals in the other one.

The only way for a script to access the data in a different file is either trought relationships or external scripts. To perform a single logical operation I end up with several scripts scattered in many files.

What do you think about that ?

Regards,

Paolo.

[andygaunt]

http://wmotion.com/variables.html

HTH

[jasonwood]

It's not possible to copy-paste the code... The only way to see find/sort settings is to print the script!!

I agree... these limitations are just silly.

You can comment the code though... look for the "Comment" script step.

[Kurt Knippel]

Everything that you mention is true (although importing/exporting is NOT the only way to re-use scripts). However everything you mention could be reversed when talking about another RDBMS, you could say "It does not have a simple clickable scripting editor, I have to do everything with a text editor and copy and paste it."

[DykstrL]

Boy, where do I start with this one?

First - I agree that there are a lot of features and fixes that needs to be included in FileMaker. Some of the shortcomings are very frustrating. Also, FileMaker will not be appropriate on all situations. My basic yardstick is if you are going to be collecting a finite number of records and will have a relatively finite number of CONCURRENT users, than FileMaker will probably be able to do the job. I.e., you would not be able to run a business like Amazon.com on FileMaker - it just wasn't designed for that.

That said, one of the things I REALLY like about developing in FileMaker is it's versatility - If you give 10 developers a scenario, you will get 10 different solutions to that scenario - none of them will be wrong, you will just have 10 different solutions to choose from to apply in that situation. This makes FileMaker one of those programs that no matter how much you know about it and how long you've been using it, you will constantly be learning more ways to do more things - even from beginners. It's not just a matter of banging out code. At least for me, things have a way of staying fresh and interesting.

If you want to create a database and get it up and running and usable for a lot of users really fast, I defy anyone to do it faster in any other software other than FileMaker! Period!

Developing more complicated, enterprise database environments require a lot of time, planning, testing, and patience - whether you are using FileMaker, SQL and Powerbuilder, Access, C++, .NET. or anything else. What also applies in all situations is, put yourself in your user's place and try to think about - or ask your users - any and all tools they will need to create/use/process the data - then give it to them - at the same time find out all of the traps and 'gotchas' that your users can find themselves in and protect them from ending up where they might have problems. Not even FileMaker will do this for you. If it did, There would be a button in FileMaker that would automatically pump out the files with layouts, buttons, scripts, etc., all ready to go and we'd all be out of a job.

OK - off the box now, Happy FileMaking!

[mikemd]

I hope this thread isn't entirely cold, as it poses in a different way the question I raised in "Any programming languages for Filemaker Pro".

Just want to encourage the participants in this thread to take a look at the above listed message.

mikemd