In the final part of this two part series, we cover the technique introduced in part one in more detail. We also carry out a number of tests and present the results. We also try to address some of the limitations of this technique and ways in which you could try to work around these… Read more...
In the first of a two part series, we begin the search for a faster way to perform aggregates in FileMaker. We cover why aggregates can be quite a costly operation - especially on wide area networks - and use that as a jumping off point for finding a faster method… Read more...
Pretty much everything in FileMaker comes with some form of comment box to let you add more information - such as fields, menus, custom functions, calculations, scripts, and the graph. However the one area lacking in a comment box is value lists, unless that is, you think a little outside of the box… Read more...
You may be familiar with the Sort Records dialog in FileMaker which allows you to display records sorted by one or more fields. What you may be less familiar with is the ability to more explicitly define a sort order with the assistance of a value list. This article gives an introduction to this often overlooked feature, and provides a few examples along the way… Read more...
In part two, I demonstrated how to implement the basics of the join table solution in FileMaker. While the solution works fine as an illustration for join tables, it lacked many of the basic interface features that would make it a usable solution.
In part three, I will show how to implement some of these features, namely the following: Better selection of a Student for an Enrollment, Deletion of Enrollments & Prevention of “over-enrolling” a course… Read more...
In part one, we built a couple of basic conditional value lists to select sport names & equipment items. Part two demonstrated how the conditional value lists could be tweaked for use within a portal. The last part in the series gives some basic techniques to help the selection process from your drop-downs, and ensure that the chosen values remain consistent and correct… Read more...
Part two in this three-part series deals with constructing conditional value lists that are to be used within a portal. In part one, the conditional value lists built were for use on a single record on a layout. Portals however may contain many rows, each row being a record with it's own field values… Read more...
Conditional Value lists may be the most asked about piece of functionality on the FileMaker Cafe. To try and provide a thorough and easy to follow explanation of what they are and how they work, I decided to write an article on the subject and build a small example file to help illustrate the technique… Read more...
There are four main areas of your database where you can use special separator lines to help keep information organised, these are Scripts, Layouts, Value Lists & Custom Menus. This article will go through each and explain how to use them, and why they are a good idea to use. Read more...