ISO FileMaker Magazine

When starting out with FileMaker, there's rarely the situation where you receive any "before you get started" advice. This is because working in FileMaker is like picking up a blank canvas and having someone say "Go for it! Paint something."

Essentially, you need to know what the tools are, how you use them, what can be accomplished and how certain decisions might affect you. So, when it comes to field indexing, you might not know the default settings could potentially cause your solution to become bigger than it should - without any benefit to performance.

While searching an indexed field vs. an unindexed one becomes somewhat obvious - the search may be slower than expected - it's the fact that every field, by default, can optionally enable its index that makes things interesting with regards to file size and, to a certain degree, some efficiency.

In this video I break down exactly how you can see what is going on with each specific field index and what the true difference is between a value index and a word index. You may even find out that your primary key fields are actually able to index more than they really should!

Claris International, Inc. released Claris FileMaker 2023 (version 20) of the FileMaker platform on Tue. April 25th 2023. This release, like all previous dot releases, saw just a few major features and some new branding via a new icon.

In my opinion, there are primarily three major features in FMP 20 and a VERY large number of both fixes and minor features. I'm calling this one the "move towards enterprise" release. It improves upon its level of support for robust technologies such as ARM support, furthered Linux support and integrates features which will help any organization with more easily tracking critical data.

I've created a somewhat lengthy video which provides insight to the major new 20 features and also recaps the other features which have been released over the previous 3 years.

Give yourself 30-60 minutes to catch up with what's been released in the FileMaker platform over the previous years up until today's release.

While you won't have access to as many visual effects as if you had created a native iOS application, there are still some things you can do and take advantage of with native transitions within FileMaker Go. One of my own recent experiences led to making a dedicated script which enhances the visual appeal of performing a find within a single layout.

In order to gain the advantage of FileMaker Go's native layout transitions, you can use a dedicated layout and script to accomplish some really nice transition effects. It's also a good idea to be familiar with how you can use the Set Layout Object Animation script step in conjunction with Popovers and Sliders.

This video will show you a few solutions to making your FileMaker Go/iOS SDK solution a bit more visually appealing by taking advantage of the native transitions provided by the environment.

Learning everything you can do with Claris/FileMaker scripts is such a wonderful journey. When you first start using the available script triggers, it often becomes a bit of an issue if you aren't fully aware of all the impacts. This video is an update to older videos which didn't have the insights presented in this video.

If you've been using Script Triggers within Claris/FileMaker for some time, then you might want to give this video a watch to see if you're missing any of the latest and greatest know-how dealing with Script Triggers.

If you're using Claris/FileMaker for either part-time or full-time development, and you've not installed the MonkeyBread plug-in, then you're doing something wrong. Many of the most desired features for working with code, such as code folding, extended syntax highlighting, variable auto-completion, the ability to search code, line jumping and other convenience features are available for free when you install the MBS (MonkeyBread) plug-in.

In this video, I go over all the free features and how to simply install the plug-in. If you've not taken the time to investigate what the plug-in offers then you'll get a great head start by just watching this free video.

Get ( WindowMode ) can be really useful when used to vary what is shown within your user interface. This video will both introduce and show you how to take advantage of the function.

Interested in how you might use the Get ( Device ) environment function? This video will both introduce and show you how to take advantage of the function.

For all my time with FileMaker, there's this peculiar aspect of one's learning journey where small bits and pieces of information come to you in odd ways. You either happen to stumble upon them, or you're told about them through the grapevine. Not from the company itself.

While most large companies are often busy with the business of improving their software, their outbound communications about certain things aren't always prompt or highly detailed. Personally, I love what Claris has been doing with FileMaker communication in the last few years. It's a night and day situation compared to just 5 years ago. There are, however, situations where you have to hear about a particular feature from a close parter like Soliant. Even Claris themselves didn't publicize the fact that FileMaker Server 19.5 supported Perform Script on Server - running on Server - via a flag named SupportNestedPSOS. Go ahead, search for it in Google. You won't find it anywhere on any of the Claris sites (at least as of the posting this article).

Which brings me to technical issues and possible bugs. Unless you frequent the Claris Community forums, it's unlikely you've heard about the 9 year issue of FileMaker being a total hog when it comes to memory allocation for certain functions. All credit goes to Alex Zueiv for this long running discovery. At this stage, it may be known and intentional by Claris, but it certainly is an eye opener. So much so that I decided to make this video to increase awareness. Like you, I like my software to run as efficiently as possible and workarounds, hacks, what have you, I'm going to take advantage of the findings because with software, that's just what you do. You optimized until it's as good as it can be!

Finding things within any database system requires the understanding of how to make a proper query of what you're searching for. In FileMaker, this comes in the form of FileMaker's Query By Form method of searching. To fully understand all of its power, you need to explore the concept of multiple requests, omit requests, using search operators and more.

However, before you even start to get into Query By Form, you need to know what's going on with FileMaker's Quick Find feature. It's a very powerful method of searching which will satisfy most users' needs.

In this video you'll find a step-by-step approach to using the two primary forms of searching FileMaker data. First, we start with maximizing Quick Find and then move on to using FileMaker's Query By Form method of searching for data.