Newbie from MS Access97

[yellowpike]

Best To All!

Developed db in Accsess that must now be converted (improved some may say)to FMpro5.

Not being a seasoned db veteran, I hope to find info to help me transfer concepts/terms learned in Access for application in FMpro5.

I have managed to import my tables, establish relationships, and am now learning layouts/scripts.

1)Scripts=Macros How about VBA equivalant?

2)Events equivalant?

3)I assume storing master table in same "folder" as related tables (2)equivalant to storing these 3 tables together in Access db window?

tia

yellowpike

[kraftyman]

Having done this myself, I have some opinions

Filemaker is a good product, with a friendly user interface and relatively easy style. It does not force the user to the adopted normalization standards and makes it easy to get up and running. It is fairly slack with field definitions and enforcing data integrity. As a pure windows product it does not match the microsoft offerings in terms of operating system integration and sheer grunt. But horses for courses..

1)Scripts=Macros How about VBA equivalant?

>Filemaker does not recognise events

Any scripts you want to run have to be activated by a button ( be it visible or invisible) or by another script. The scripts do not interact with the operating system particularly well, and forget about using variables. The Filemaker "Global Field" is a poor man's variable, and tends to create very bloated designs.

>There is no way of saving "code" in a module, all scripting is saved with the data. You can import scripts to other files ,but you have to recreate references and relationships which is a MASSIVE pain in the neck. ( so use a text document tostore your code). The scipts are very, very limited compared with what can be accomplished with VBA.(This is simply a reflection of the cross platform nature of the product.)

2)Events equivalent?

There are no events at all, you have to create buttons for everything.Fortunately changing from one layout to the next is usually accomplished by a button, so it is not as big a pain as it could be. However, consider that creating even the barest tabbed interface is quite a task in Filemaker, becuse is no tabbed "control".You will end up duplicating lots and lots of layouts because controls cannot appear/disappear/change depending on changing values. There is no conditional formatting either , apart from some very agricultural red numerals for negative values, so that you will need lots of duplication and global or calculated fields if the user interface is at all complicated.

3)I assume storing master table in same "folder" as related tables (2)equivalant to storing these 3 tables together in Access db window?

Yes it is but there is a major problem with queries, that could use all 3 tables. Filemaker does not generate queries per se, and if you have a many to many relationship, you cannot see data from the "third" table unless you create calculated fields to view it, and on top of it you certainly cannot easily edit/enter new records in that "third" table.

You may want to keep your Access97 file and use Filemaker as an ODBC client for the data and queries, but you can't "link" to any tables or queries - you can only import.

Be prepared for a lot of hard work and gnashing of teeth. Filemaker does things very differently. There are plugins which help particular shortcomings in the main product.