FM 7 Reference books

[DonH]

What is the best reference book out there for FM7? We are upgrading from FM3 finally and would like to have solid reference material.

[Rob Ruff]

Learn FileMaker Pro 7 is a good one.

[Deep Thought II]

Filemaker help files are pretty helpful already I think... it's got a reference in it too.

[Matt Haughton]

Try the FileMaker website, there's some useful stuff and also a bit of very heavy reading, but its all written by experts and worth working through, i would certainly recommend "How to migrate existing solutions" and also the Security, Web Publishing, and FM 7 Server, tech briefs and white papers, depending on what you want from FileMaker

http://www.filemaker.com/upgrade/techbriefs.html

[RDecker]

There aren't many FM7 books out yet. I know of only 2: J. Feiler's *Teach Yourself FM7 in 24 Hours* (which is very much a beginners book), and J. Stars et al, Learn FMP7* (which is almost a textbook style book; starts with beginners, but quickly moves to an intermediate level--much better than Feiler's book). There are supposedly more coming...

RDecker

[gadfly]

I am trying to decide between these two books, one of which was recommended above:

Learn Filemaker Pro 7 (has 9 customer reviews with an average of 4.5 stars)

or

Using Filemaker Pro 7 (has two 5 star customer reviews)

Is anybody familiar enough with both of these to comment on the differences? I've been using FM since version 3 so I know the program fairly well but I'm a novice when it comes to scripting and complex calculations.

Of course, if you are only familiar with one of them, I'd still love to hear what you think of it.

[Mark Scott]

I haven't read Learn FileMaker 7, so can't comment on it. A cursory scan of the book at a local bookseller left me with the impression that it's more of an introductory to intermediate text, but I could be wrong. I can, however, highly recommend Special Edition Using FileMaker 7. It's billed as an Intermediate to Advanced book and, once you get past some 'Basics' review in the first section, the book does indeed get into more advanced territory. It's a hefty 1100 pages and has very little fluff between the covers. The four authors clearly know both FileMaker and relational database theory. Good sections on data modeling (oddly, no formal discussion of the normal forms, but then most FM books mistakenly omit that material), advanced calculations, scripting, and advanced layout techniques. Comprehensive appendices with detailed references to script steps and built-in functions. It's also well written and nicely laid out. From what I've seen on the bookstore shelves, this is as close to a definitive reference for FM 7 as is out there.

[Chuck]

Using FileMaker 7 is a good book that I've been keeping near me since I bought it about a week ago. I read through the first half, and read a few pages now and then. Overall, it's very good, and I've gotten enough tips from it to make it worth the purchase. Another nice feature of the book is that the entire book is available in PDF from the CD, so I also have it on my PowerBook when I am traveling, although for some reason the PDF doesn't allow your own bookmarks, which limits its utility.

As big as the book is, I wish at times that it went into more depth, especially regarding XML and ODBC, two topics I'm weak on. It has good information FileMaker users regardless of skill level. I think that having four authors helped them to avoid the religious wars common in FileMaker (i.e., which development conventions to use). I've worked with Scott Love and Chris Moyer, and can testify that they know their stuff inside and out.

If you're interested in more depth regarding normalization, the previous edition of this book, Using FileMaker 5 by Rich Columbre, has a good discussion. Perhaps he'll do the version 9 edition, since Chris Moyer wrote the one for version 3.

FileMaker is becoming so big that I'm wondering if one book can do it all. Last year there was a series of books on FileMaker sub-topics, such as developer issues, XML, etc. I'm hoping that this series is soon updated for version 7. Regardless, Using FileMaker 7 is a great book that should be part of every developer's library, although I don't think it's "the only FileMaker 7 book you need", as the cover says.

Chuck

[transpower]

I wrote a review of Stars' Learn FileMaker Pro 7 for Amazon.com; I gave it four stars. Just be aware that there are quite a few mistakes in it.

[torifile]

I wrote a review of Stars' Learn FileMaker Pro 7 for Amazon.com; I gave it four stars. Just be aware that there are quite a few mistakes in it.

It's a decent book but there ARE some errors in it. That's maddening for a beginner like me whose trying to figure out how to do things. I'm sure some of the stuck points I'm bumping into are related to little errors that I'm not catching.