I am currently building a system for a company that does not want me to see their data. Is there any way to lock myself out of viewing the data but i will still be able to define fields etc...?

Clones of the files or The Separation Model maybe?

Steven

Why not train someone to import it

That'll work too, provided that the user understands the data model and gets the data into the right tables with the correct foreign keys.

Steven

I was really hoping to do this through managing accounts and privileges. I tried to make a privilege set that doesn't allow me to see the fields but then i can't manage the database once logged in under that user account.

Any more ideas?

If you have privileges to build the database, then you can see the data. It would seem that the best approach (other than signing a non-disclosure agreement) would be for them to send you a clone of the database. Then you could either build a separation model structure, as Steven says, or you could do an automated import, as Stuart suggested (or both).

I would lean toward a separation model. Because this is going to be an ongoing problem. If you considered their current database file to be the "data" file, and built an entirely different interface file, then you could just send it, and it should work.

But that's assuming their current file is efficiently built in one file, and in perfect condition. Not likely. So you'd best just use their current structure for reference, and build a new one. At some point someone would have to import the data from their current data file into your new structure. It would only be a 1-time shot, so it seems awkward to build an automated routine to do it. But it would solve that problem. You'd have the old structure and the new. You could build the routine. You could test it. Someone competent at their end would need to run it, and check the final result.

You would need some example data, just to see how things work. It cannot be that ALL of their data is sensitive. They can remove personal data. You don't need it, and it is not hard to remove. They could just export some data, as either FileMaker or text, and take out what they wanted to.

If they are unwilling to cooperate in any way with this, that would be a pink flag (not quite red). I would be nervous to work for someone who basically made it almost impossible to build a database for them.

What Fenton said.

Steven