Any programming language for Filemaker Pro

[mikemd]

I am looking to replace MSoft Access with another development tool. FMP has been winning awards, its company support looks good, it has cross platform, etc, etc. So it seems like a good candidate on my short list (so is Alpha 5, but even more so VizFox Pro, or C#, but using the latter two means I'd miss out on leveraging the existing functionality built in to Alpha 5 and esp. FileMaker Pro. That means: it takes much longer to get to market!!) Access is definitely not on my list.

What I don't understand is how FMP developers can write robust applications w/o a programming language. I understand there is the Script. But can a script parse an ASCII file, do lookups on the contents, combine/delete/skip data depending on the lookup results, do leaps of string manipulation on further conditions, and write the row to a table? Well, probably you FMPers can do all that, but it would make more comfortable knowing that I could always fall back to code in a pinch. I have heard there is a plugin that incorporates a VizBasic_for_Applications language, but the FileMaker sales guy on the 800 line didn't know ANY THING about that. And I have to wonder why one has to obtain a variety of (3rd party) plugins for file access, string routines, and etc? Does FMP still have some programming holes?

---So: is there or ist that not language plugin for FMP? Or do I even need it? (Any futher comments regarding Alpha5 etc, also gratefully accepted.)

tia...

[SteveB]

You posed many different questions that will be the start of a very interesting thread. There has been some discussion the last few days (look at the topic "Making A Living" for a discussion about Alpha 5) about FM, its features, and FMI support.

Filemaker's scripting is very powerful and easy to learn. But FMI has not kept the product current and provides poor service and is not at all responsive to the developer community's requests for enhancements. On customer service, I would give them an 'F'. Their last 2 upgrades pretty much sucked, as most of what they did was sloppy and incomplete.

The proliferation of plugins will probably continue indefinately. My guess is that the average developer probably uses upwards of 3 plugins. I don't see FMI wanting to take away the third-party bread and butter. In Version 6, Filemaker added some enhancements to the Show Message script step, but it is not nearly at the level of the Troi Dialog plugin. The interface to third party plugins is at best crude and I would say really 1st generation.

As far as I know there is no Visual Basic interface from Filemaker. I raised this with FMI when I first started using the product 3 years ago and they lied to me and said "sure, you can use Visual Basic". The only way to connect from scripting to the "outside" is thru this cruddy External function that requires you to pass all parameters, variables, etc in one field.

All that said, Filemaker is very easy to learn and develop in. It can be a real pain in the ass when you want to do some simple things like formatting telephone numbers, or poping up a mini-calendar (needs a plugin or you have to do hand stands using a user developed calendar).

It string parsing is very primitive, but you can generally do most of what you want, and this forum is a great help when you get stuck. In fact forget about FMI support: this is the place to go when your mind goes numb.

Finally, I'll now get back to a short discussion of FMI versus Alpha 5. I took Capt Kurt's advise, contacted AlphaWorks on Thurday, and I now have a licensed copy of AL5. I spent about 2 hours reading the online documentation, so please view my conclusions in that light. AL 5 will be harder to learn, but terribly so. It is clearly more powerful than FM 6. You don't need plugins since it is extensible having been built in a version of Basic, called XBasic. You can set a Date Field attiribute and cause a popup mini-calendar to appear. Each field can have its own formatting...say goodbye to stacking 2 and 3 fields on top of each other. It has its own debugger (yes, even displaying field values as they change) and own installer. It can easily zip and unzip files. It has as a layout type "tabbed layouts". No need for a plugin to execute a script when you leave a field. It has wizards (called genies) to help to can XBasic procedures.

If I had to make a choice today, it would be AL 5 for what I perceive is more power more easily. If you've never programmed before, I would suggest Filemaker; if you're experienced with any programming language, and you're looking for a powerful tool but don't want MS Access maybe ALPHA 5 is deserves a hard look. I will definately continue to evaluate it and post my findings back here.

Steve

[Yiannis]

What about referential integrity in Alpha 5?

How you can handle it?

Is it more simple than FM?

=============================================

What about the internationality in Alpha 5?

All the world is not only the English language environments...

[Guest]

If you want a RAD tool that is cross platform FMP is about the only game in town. We are running an electronic patient record solution using FMP and have no regrets using both Mac and Windows clients against OSX FMP Server. You can run MySQL on both Macs and Windows machines, but the front end is going to take a lot of work. I just compiled, ran and displayed a C API query against MySQL on the Mac, so it can be done.

[Garry Claridge]

You could use ODBC to talk to FMP. RealBasic uses this method.

I haven't done much with ODBC and FMP. However, the general reports have indicated that the performance is poor.

Another method is XML through the WebCompanion. Some languages can work with XML in this manner.

Good Luck.

Garry

[Guest]

Hmmm. Apparently 4D also "runs" on classic macs and windows and soon on OSX.

[falkaholic]

4D already runs on OSX, has for awhile. Theres been a beta out for a long time. It became offical a few months ago as I recall.

On the main topic, the FM ODBC tool sucks. If you want a cross platform interface to a ODBC datasource, use RealBasic.

[BobWeaver]

On the subject of RealBasic, it has its own built-in database engine. But, I have no idea how powerful it is since I haven't played with it (I've used RealBasic, but not its DB).

[falkaholic]

The RealBasic database tool is not ment for real datastorge per say. Correct me if I'm wrong but the RB database is stored in plain text. RealBasic's main strangth in this area is that it works with a few other database systems. (you could make it control FM with AppleScript if ya really want it too).

That company I work for was used Cytrix to access an Access database that in turn used ODBC to access a PostgeSQL DB (say that 10 times fast). Looked into FM, it couldn't do it, then I thought of RealBasic, it can do it quite easily.

[rickintokyo]

...What I don't understand is how FMP developers can write robust applications w/o a programming language.

I'm confused about this, too. In applying for a copyright on an application I wrote using FM6, my attorney wrote:

"We found that FileMaker Developer creates program using languages of XML/XSLT, XML, ODBC/JDBC, Apache, Microsoft IIS web servers, Microsoft Excel, and C++.

Which language did you use to create your program?

In other words, at the beginning of drafting the program, which language did you set to use?"

Can anyone tell me how I can answer him, that is to say, does FM have a programming language and if so, what is it?

TIA

[Kurt Knippel]

Filemaker uses a proprietary format for storing its code or scripts. FMP does make use of all of the above referenced technologies for various purposes internal to the program and for external communications.

You can only really copyright specific screens and scripts...send pictures of them to you attorney.