Collecting Data (arrays & lists)

Your FileMaker database is obviously designed to store data. FileMaker also provides the tools for precisely extracting that data as needed. When and how you extract the data is based on your needs. Sometimes, you need the data for an external system or API. Maybe it's needed for an export or you need the data specifically for a given visualization of that data.

In a recent video, I showed some Sankey Diagrams and how cool they are as visualization tools. One of keys to presenting a great visualization is being able to extract the data you need to present. This data may also change as the user navigates through the chart or your user interface.

So, in short, we need to be familiar with all the various ways in which we can collect our data out of the database. Fortunately, there is a somewhat small collection of methods, but knowing how each of them work and when you might use one over the other is a matter of experience and practice. In this video, I cover the possible variations and you get to choose which method you want to use and when. The ultimate method is something you'll find towards the end of the video.

AttachmentSize
CollectingData.zip1.63 MB

Comments

Hi Matt, why you need to commit records on server side (line 3 of "Return Data Collection" script)? Thanks

Love the speed and implementation of the new WHILE function, Many thanks for the great example.
Question: How would we modify the WHILE script to return the data in Key-value paired values?

Matt, over the past 2 decades, I and my Clients have benefited so much from your efforts.

Thank you!

Question:
This video is an excellent education in collecting data, do you also have or planning to have an FMT on parsing the data that this example collects?