RFID & Scheduling Code To Run

[Philip Hayes]

I have two questions for the hard core programmer out there....

1) I have a RFID reader in which one of my C programmers is building a tool that can read the data from the RFID device and post it into a table in a database. Currently, we plan to do with with SQL server. Is it posssible to do this into FMP 7? If so, how? ODBC?

2) Is it posssible to write code that executes every 30 seconds? If so, how would I do that? Basically I need to flash a warning if a condition exists from the inputed data from the RFID device.

[QuinTech]

Hi, Philip. I don't know about RFID (radio frequency identification?) but i do know this:

1) FMP can handle imports of many standard data formats (text files, CSVs, DBFs, ... ) as well as XML imports. I'm guessing since you identify your device as a reader there is to be only a one-way information exchange. In that case, you could definitely do this through a (scripted) import. ODBC would probably be a better model, and this is also possible in FM7 (as well as prior versions).

2) Yes. FileMaker has its own scripting language in which you could use a loop & 30-second pause. However, there are ways of validating data within FM that are better, and you could look into those (FM offers the option to automatically validate data in fields based on pre-defined criteria).

Jerry

[DanBrill]

The problem is that if one script is running with a 30-second pause, other scripts aren't going to be able to run while it is paused.

I've never done anything where I needed a script to run every 30 seconds. But I've had scripts that run once a day. I set up a trigger file. That is, a file that has one script in it that is set to run on file open. The file opens, the script runs, and the last step of the script is to close the file. Then I just use the windows scheduler to open this file at a set time, say, midnight every day. It would be incredibly tedious to set this to run every 30 seconds -- that would be 2,880 events to schedule -- 24 * 60 * 2.

I'm with Jerry -- validate via calculation rather than with scripts in this case, or validate as part of the import script.

I think there are some plugins that will let you schedule events from within FM, but I've never worked with them.

[Philip Hayes]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

What I'm trying to create is a RFID tracking / accountability database. Lets say we have 100 objects. Each one is assigned a RFID. The ODBC connection will insert a RFID that the RFID reader receives into the database. The Filemaker databse will then match the RFID to the corresponding object. If the objects RFID does not come in again on the reader within 15 minutes of the first one, an alert should pop-up.

I actually already have an application programmed in Cold Fusion that does just this but would prefer to create it FMP.

Any suggestions?