How do you troubleshoot?

[Philip Curtis]

Hi,

I am new to Filemaker and learning on FM-Pro14-Adv.  I am reading 'The Missing Manual' book and also following Udemy's free Contacts Database FM video tutorial.  I am building my second DB which is a more detailed contacts list.  My first is a simple inventory DB I am using at work.

My frustrations are coming with troubleshooting problems that come up.  As I follow along on the video, I am getting different results then what is shown.  I am not even sure how to troubleshoot the problems.  I am an engineer and very systems oriented and obviously I do not know the program well nor the structure.  Does anyone have suggestions on how they troubleshoot problems?  What structure do you use?  Goings from the easiest to the more complex problems first, or using comparison methods?

I really could use a suggestion here.  It feels like I am doing a simple DB and getting stumped consistently.

Thanks,

Phil

[Lee Smith]

Hi Philip,

 I’m not quite sure what your question is. I haven’t read the missing manual nor have I watched Udemy’s  video, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. There are many ways to accomplish the same things in FileMaker. Perhaps you could attach a copy of your file and explain to us what you’re trying to do and what’s happening.

 Lee

[Wim Decorte]

21 minutes ago, Philip Curtis said:

Hi,

Does anyone have suggestions on how they troubleshoot problems?  What structure do you use?  Goings from the easiest to the more complex problems first, or using comparison methods?

Your two best friends when it comes to troubleshooting are the Data Viewer and the Script Debugger.

When you troubleshoot, make no assumptions, just step through each line of the script, watch for errors (reported at the bottom of the Script Debugger window) and inspect the data in the Data Viewer.  You may want to add some things in the "Watch" tab of the Data Viewer, such as:

get(layouttablename)

get(layoutname)

get(foundcount)

get(recordnumber)

 

As you probably know, the thing with bugs is that you need to be able to reproduce them at will.  That means you're close to being able to fix them.

If you are looking for issues; never make more than one change at a time before testing again; otherwise you won't know which of the changes fixed the issue...

If users have a problem but you don't then make sure to test with an account that has the same privilege set as the users.  Along those lines; keep in mind that users may run into record-locking issues if you haven't anticipated those and those are errors that only will happen "under load", never if you are the only user in the system.

If you develop on a live system while users are also doing actual work then know that you may be generating errors for them by locking the schema as you make modifications.  In short: don't develop on a live system (or if you must: really beef up your error trapping and handling).

 

 

[Philip Curtis]

Hi Lee,

I have attached the DB to this message.  Please resist making fun of me.  I realize I am playing Tee-ball in a major league ballpark with the FM knowledge here but to misquote Popeye, 'I am where I am'.

Basically in the Tasks tab of the Portal, I have no idea why the Fields of Urgency, Status, Created Date, and Completed Date are not showing up in the following line-additional tasks after the first one is entered.

Thanks,

Phil

Contacts_PhilCurtis.fmp12

 

 

Thanks Wim.  

Edited February 23, 2016 by Philip Curtis

[webko]

For some reason, although they look like they're in the portal, they're not.

In Layout mode, grab all 4 and move them off to the side. Save by going to Browse mode.

Go back to layout mode and drag them back so they fit entirely inside the the white top row - they should now appear correctly (or at least, they do for me...)

[Lee Smith]

10 minutes ago, Philip Curtis said:

I realize I am playing Tee-ball in a major league ballpark with the FM knowledge here but to misquote Popeye, 'I am where I am'.

We have all been there too. webko already supplied the answer, but do NOT be intimidated by the members here. We are all ready, willing and able to help you with questions.

Lee

[Philip Curtis]

Thank you Webko.  I'll try that now.

 

That did the trick!!  Thanks, I did not even realize it was out of the Portal somewhere.  How did you catch that?

Thanks alot, I appreciate it <:

Phil

Wim,

Your notes are over my head right now but I have copied the text and looked into the help files for the Script Debugger and the Data Viewer.  I will read up on this and keep aware of it.

Thank you

Phil

[Lee Smith]

40 minutes ago, Wim Decorte said:

Your two best friends when it comes to troubleshooting are the Data Viewer and the Script Debugger

You have paid extra for these 2 tools. Read about them, as they can save your butt sometimes when it comes to trying to find why something isn’t working.

webko found the error by looking at the Tab Task that you pointed to "

39 minutes ago, Philip Curtis said:

Basically in the Tasks tab of the Portal

Lee

[webko]

35 minutes ago, Philip Curtis said:

That did the trick!!  Thanks, I did not even realize it was out of the Portal somewhere.  How did you catch that?

 

I used the tried and true technique of fiddling with stuff ;-)

[Philip Curtis]

Nice, thanks again for that Webko.

I have had a full day of FM, first with inventory and now playing with that Contact list, for fun.

Cheers,

Phil

[Lee Smith]

14 minutes ago, Philip Curtis said:

I have had a full day of FM,

Only one, watch out, you’re going to get hooked and it will take over your life. :-)

[bruceR]

"Thanks, I did not even realize it was out of the Portal somewhere.  How did you catch that?"

Not sure how webko did it; but part of "fiddling with stuff" can include dragging the portal around.

And then noticing that things you thought were inside the portal did not move. That's what happens with your file.

When trying this method (arbitrarily dragging stuff around on your layout) be sure to use the "Revert Layout" command to put everything back where it was originally; if that is what you need to do.

[Fitch]

Yes, FileMaker portals can be finnicky. Those of us who've been working in FileMaker for a while know that that's one of the first things you check: are the fields in the portal?

When FileMaker 12 came out it seemed that fields wouldn't "stick" to a portal unless you dragged them into the portal with the mouse -- nudging them with the arrow keys wouldn't do it. This at least has been fixed now, but we still see some weird behavior sometimes. Recently I encountered a field that looked like it was in one portal was actually "stuck" to another portal on a layout.

As Bruce mentioned, a good trick to check that your portal is OK is to click the portal and then nudge it up or down a pixel or two with the arrow keys. Did the fields move with the portal? If not, they need to be moved. The top left corner of the field needs to be inside the portal.

[Philip Curtis]

Good advice, I will definitely pay attention to the Portal layout more.  I have read a chapter on them but I still haven't totally 'gotten them' yet.  Relationships either for that point.  It's still a little fuzzy in my head knowing when and how to use relationships and portals.  Which seems like a bummer to me because it appears to be the core benefit and power of FM and DB's, especially relationships.

Question:  Does the performance of a FM DB get 'quirky' the larger the file size gets?  I understand low RAM and a slow chip can tribute to this to but my question is more about the FM Software specifically.  If so, how big is to big where you should start thinking about slimming the DB down?

Thanks all,

I really appreciate the help.

Phil

[webko]

46 minutes ago, Philip Curtis said:

how big is to big where you should start thinking about slimming the DB down?

Our main systems here have millions of rows in some tables - it comes down to good database design and knowing what can cause performance issues ( mainly unstored calculation fields, Summary fields on data entry layouts, finding across relationships...)

This a your mileage may vary type thing...

[BrentHedden]

On February 22, 2016 at 9:01 PM, Wim Decorte said:

Your two best friends when it comes to troubleshooting are the Data Viewer and the Script Debugger.

Like most things Wim suggests, I can back this up 100%.  The data viewer alone is worth the price of FMP Advanced.  If you can't afford or don't want to shoulder the expense, temporarily placing all of the fields on the layout and using the pause script step each time you want to evaluate the data is a decent alternate.