Hi everyone,

I have a developed a database system for the company that I work for which contains about ten files eg.Contacts,Invoices,current projects,Timekeeping etc.

The contacts file which is the largest contains about 3000 records and the whole system totals about 20Mb.

I am currently studying Object Oriented system development and have been experimenting with a rewrite of my database, I have normalized my files and broken my system down into Classes and objects,my Contacts file is now complete and has been turned into four or five seperate smaller files.

My question is has anyone else used this method to develop Filemaker? and what are their experiences/difficulties. I haven't done much testing yet except give it a quick run over the network and was surprised by the increase in performance, I realise that this method will probably triple the amount of files needed but they will all be very small.

Hope someone out there will be willing to share their knowledge and experience. Thanks

It depends upon what the smaller files are. If you have given each contact type a different file, this is a mistake. If, however, you has broken out supporting data into additional files (addresses, notes, etc.), this is a good thing. Using a smaller number of native fields (not unstored calculations,globals, etc.) in each FM file greatly improves performance. Additional files don't seem to cause any problem (until you hit the 50 file limit for a client).

-bd

Thanks for your prompt reply Live Oak, thats exactly what I was hoping to hear I should be able to do it in under fifty files, its also just struck me that all the files would be extremely 'reuseable' in other applications.

Anybody got a pointer as to how to view/enter the data, my first thought was using an 'Interface file' with portals set to 'create related records' but maybe someone knows a better way, or where I could find some example files?

Once again thanks to Live Oak and rest of the Forum,

Vincent O'Brien

The "interface file" approach is very much in vogue in the FM community. I does have some limitations. List views are quite useful in many situation. A pure interface file approach kind of assumes that you can live with short lists in portals and filter the portals to show a short lists of related records in a way easy for the user. Many reports will still want to end up in the related files. Every time someone gives a presentation on this approach at DevCon there are a bunch of lingering practical questions. The approach seems to work better in some unique situations than in general (IMHO).

-bd