Hi,

I'm looking at purchasing FileMaker Developer if it would help with the work I need to do. I see a blurb on FileMaker's site that Developer supports ODBC and JDBC. I have a question regarding that.

Does FMD's ODBC and JDBC support allow me to use something like C, Perl or Java to talk with a FileMaker database?

Thanks,

Jack

ODBC connectivity is included with FileMaker standard.

To talk to FM, use AppleScript or DDE/ WSH , or (if web-enabled DB) CDML/XML in combo with perl, php, whatever.

Use FMdev if you want to debug complex projects or write PlugIns in C.

Developer allows you the following:

Create a stand alone runtime solution

open a solution in kiosk mode

rename files and update internal links

permenantly prevent modification of database structure

use custom menu option for About, Help or Scripts menu

add or remove Filemaker extension

It also provides some licensing for runtime solutions.

Thanks for the information. I have read that FMP supports ODBC. However, my understanding of that ODBC feature is that it allows you to use FMP to connect to another RDBMS like Oracle, MySQL, etc.

Unfortunately, I'm looking for the ability to use a programming language like Perl to query a FMP database. Particularly on a Mac. And the research I've done indicates that there is no ODBC driver for MacOSX to talk with a FMP database and I was trying to find out if FileMaker Developer had this or if it maybe came with some proprietary tool that mimicked this.

Thanks again for the info.

Hmm, well I am no expert in Perl or even ODBC for that matter, but I do know that you can use Applescript to pull data out of a Filemaker database. You can also use WebCompanion and http requests to pull XML out of Filemaker. There are also several SQL plugin available for Filemaker allowing you to extract data.

I think that you may find less information on this topic as most everyone is looking to pull information OUT of an external data source and INTO Filemaker, not the other way around. However I do know that many people use Filemaker to drive data-based web sites.

RE: Perl to query a FMP database

Hey, search for Mariano Peterson article