Ad hoc summaries

[David Fann]

I and my coworkers often need "ad hoc" summaries. In Geographic Information System (GIS)database tables, you simply select some records, right click the column header, and choose "Summarize." A dialog appears where you check Sum, Average, Maximum, Minimum, or whatever; you choose a place to save; and click OK. Voila, a new, saved table opens, which you can read, print, or copy/paste from. Our Access guru gets the same result in a few seconds of mad mouse clicks (not sure what he actually does). Panorama's implementation is even slicker.

But in FileMaker, I have to create new Summary fields! (One day I will get it right on the first try, maybe--probably not.) The result is a "report" of limited utility. When done, I usually want to delete the Summary fields. Do this a dozen times in a session and the minutes add up. I would like to be two or three Table View mouse clicks away from a new summary table. Say, 10 seconds total.

In the forums I see little or no demand for this functionality. However, other applications do it natively, so I suspect my work group are not the only ones using it. This one missing trick brings the discussion to a halt when I suggest my associates start using FileMaker.

[dreamingmind]

It seems you could write a script to scoop up the data and do the processing and export you need.

Variables and Let statements will allow you do some pretty serious processing without having to build new fields. Collecting record sets into value lists (or sets of related data into value lists) would give you a way to start sorting and collecting all the data of interest.

It seems a script method like this will be a bit of a one-context arrangement and this is probably not what you're looking for.

I don't think FM7 supports layout objects but with the addition of this feature, you could most likely build up a more generic system. By insuring that each layout you wanted to do summaries from had the proper set of layout objects, your script could reference the data indirectly through these and you could have a pretty flexible system.

This would be a pure FM solution.

If you would consider a plug-in, SmartPill (http://www.scodigo.com) brings the full php language into the FM calculation engine. It would be a pretty simple matter to do any summary processing you could wish for then. And there would be no problem assembling the result into the format of your choice and sending it out to a file too (since php can read and write files).

Regards, Don