Dispatches from DevCon 2007
We are back in theme-park country of Orlando, Florida. This year, DevCon returns to the Grande Lakes Marriott in Orlando, (10 minutes from Sea World). If you were lucky enough to get a room at the JW Marriott or the Ritz, the conference is conveniently right in the hotel. Corn Walker, Steve Ritchie and I made it this year from Proof. Haven’t run into Steven Blackwell or Peter Vinogradov (fellow fmCollective contributors) yet.
Day 1
Opening Session Snippets & Highlights
8:30 AM
Dominique Goupil opens. “Biggest DevCon todate…1300+ attendees…(Bubble Charts are back)…”
“We play in the Enterprise…but we are not pretending to be what we are not…still focused on sweet-spot…workgroups…strategically very important for us…The big thing with FileMaker 9 is seamless connectivity…making easy to extend FileMaker to IT…integrate more than ever…important to satisfy IT/web [integration]…bridging the gap, partnership with MySQL.”
Jon Sigler on FileMaker 9. “How we got to where we are today…FileMaker 9 is built on a fundamental principal, The FileMaker Difference…big win, release of all FileMaker 9 products on the same day…[talks a bout FileMaker 9 features]…fantastic release but didn’t stop there. Working with FileMaker means working with other Developers. Added PHP API…allows web developers to use PHP to build sites based on FileMaker…Need to work with database administrators…with FM9…much more palatable, it is about flexibility on both sides…DBA can maintain the server the way they like…(demos)”
Andrew LeCates (clap, clap, clap). LeCates demos his Ctrl-Alt-LeCates app in FileMaker, shows off object-anchoring, stretching of screens and objects. “This is good stuff”….webviewer demo, data-url, storing photograph in data-url protocol (data:image/png etc..)…shows off Ray Cologon’s demo of using a webviewer to do progress bars in FileMaker Pro 9…..I love Get(TemporaryPath)…checkout Ray’s 9-For-9 demos….the new scriptmaker…non-modal windows…login with different user privileges (clap clap)…deep breath…I’ve got one more thing, conditional formatting, ways to change FileMaker’s display of a field, as developers we are going to use conditional formatting for more than that…conditional formatting of field names, field highlighting…tie conditional formating to the window size (oooh), portal highlighting without calculation fields…custom functions can be driven by variables and other things….that’s all I am going to show about 9 today…(clap, clap, clap).”
Around 9:10 AM…
Bill Heizer (Senior Consulting Engineer) comes on to talk about external server/sql stores (ESS). “…amazed we’ve done this in such a short amount of time without a file format change…quickly attaches to MS SQL source, do finds, do exports, create relationships based on ESS data…standard FileMaker techniques on external sources….server-based DSNs (!), install drivers on the FM server, access it from FileMaker Pro….Bill shows off FileMaker finds in portals and shows the corresponding SQL statement in mssql’s SQL trace stack (dude!)…about being a better IT citizen..remove the islands, not become a silo anymore.”
9:30 AM…
Kevin Nathanson (clap clap), Sr. Product Manager for FileMaker Server 9. “I have a problem. I now have a reputation as the guy who comes on and shares the secret stuff…now I have this obligation…feeling a lot of pressure, anxiety to deliver…I am getting older…I want you to know it’s not you, it’s me…but I think I have come up with something that will satisfy you…(audience laughs)…no one outside of FileMaker has ever seen the DevCon Site Selection Assistant (SA) (audience laughs)…this is the tool we use to figure out where to hold DevCon sessions….shows off PHP site assistant…we support portals with PHP…show’s off PHP app built with Site Assistant re: DevCon sites (inside jokes about about DevCon, the desert thrown around…chicken recipes….lots of chicken)…renaming of cryptic field names (custom labels)…create summary reports with SA…
…future features (with standard heavy disclaimers that these may not actually happen) , database maintenance schedules, send SMTP mail from Server, Import/Export on Server, XML/PHP support for container fields, PHP Site Assistant improvements…”
9:50 AM
Jon Sigler returns…talks about “FileMaker 9 as a ‘great foundation for the future’…FileMaker Mobility, shows off iPhone…Andy Gaunt’s DevCon schedule for the iPhone…show’s off iPhone Theme for PHP site assistant…have FileMaker generate all the CSS properly formatted for iPhone…this week is all about FileMaker 9. This release is all about productivity, getting to external server sources.”
I finally got a chance to clean some of this up this morning. I was typing fast and don’t claim to have captured everything accurately. Please drop me a note about omissions or errors. Cheers.
Thanks for posting this. I haven’t heard much about this devcon from here.
Rob
[...] fmSpark communications tool for consolidated email, letters and labels. Also, there’s a dispatch from the opening session of DevCon over on The FileMaker Collective which is a good read if you [...]