Scriptology Developer

[ventinc]

I was interested in feedback in scriptology developers tool kit. I have a great basic understanding of fmp and am looking to further my resources and knowledge. I put my companies DB program together from scratch and wish I had started with a premade solution. I still have a lot of work to do on our db's and am now interested in spending some money to simplify my life. Any thoughts on if money is better spent on a consultant or an expensive cd.

[Moon]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kathryn:

... Any thoughts on if money is better spent on a consultant or an expensive cd.

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As a consultant in Fair Oaks, I (ahem) suggest a consultant as opposed to a cd.

Seriously, it really depends on a lot more than I can gather from your post. The Scriptology book with CD by John Mark Osborne is excellent and provides a ton of good ideas, techniques and insights. However, like everything in the world, there is a learning curve to go through. No book that I know of simplifies one's life. Experience and craft count for something, so a consultant will probably get a complicated job done quicker and better than a one-off, self taught attempt. It really is an "it depends" kind of quesiton.

[rogermax]

I found the cd set to be a great buy...worth the money I spent and a lot more. The book is excellent as well.

I agree that specific questions are at times better answers in person by a consultant.

[Kukuberra]

I found that the Scriptology book is very helpful in the way it explains the pieces. I almost never use the cd's cause I'm too busy trying to figure out solutions on the fly. My complaints have always been that there isn't a good resource out there for advanced overview. You can get simple info and all the parts to put it together if you can get your mind around the calculations but somehow none of the books really explained clearly to me how to make it all work together for an advanced solution. I would sit and think very hard, try different stuff and then stumble across the fact that it was easy if they could have just spelled out this piece of information.

Supposedly consultants can do this and have done this. However, I've also been dealing with a database created by consultants and I can't figure out in any way whatsoever what the hell they were thinking. Things that could be done simply have been blown way out of proportion. Data is scattered across six databases when it should have been found only in two. I'm in the process of creating a simpler and hopefully more flexible solution and trying to break the data out into a new db is going to be a pain.

So, my "advice" is if you don't want to go through the pain of hard thought and asking for lots of advice here then hire a consultant but ask for some samples of their work first. Cause there's nothing like a database that you've inherited and nothing is clear.

BTW, can I just say something about all the standards? Well I will anyway. Why don't the people who create the db's just make a layout with all the fields and a lot of text listing where each are shown, what they are for and anything else that seems relevent? Simply list the reason and uses for reports and what button on what layout goes where. Maybe name the fields the same name that you call them on the layout? Not always possible but more helpful than gFX4 blah blah...I know it's a global or container or whatever by looking at Field Definitions. What was your point with it though? That's what I need to know...

rant off

Marsha

[Lester Noyes]

I'm wondering if anyone knows where to find the Scriptology CD. I have bought two copies of the book from online used book sellers and neither came with the CD! (The second seller apologized and refunded my money, said keep the book.) The book is interesting and useful but, of course, makes many references to the CD which I really need to make sense of the chapters.

Lester

[Fitch]

Congratulations on reviving a 10 year old thread.

IMHO you'd be much better off studying more recent materials. Scriptology was based on FileMaker 4 and everything has changed. IIRC much of what you'd be learning is workarounds for problems that no longer exist.

(Not to be confused with Scriptology Theme Library, which is a current product.)