Adventures in Barcoding
As a fulltime educator, there’s never any shortage of new and exciting projects to inspire me and capture my interest. As an FM developer, though, it can sometimes be a bit of a stretch. Even new releases of FileMaker (like that‘ll happen any time soon…) can be a melancholy blend of “gee whiz” moments and feature request letdowns (”what?! They didn’t include facial recognition on container fields?! Damnit, I’ve been asking for that since version 4!”). Fortunately, we can sometimes count on our clients to throw something fun our way. Read more
Reflections from Exile
In the season finale of “30 Rock”, Jack Donaghee (Alec Baldwin’s high-powered executive character) suffers a heart attack, clutches his chest and cries “Ride it Donaghee! Ride it straight to hell!”
In an effort to avoid a similar fate, I recently took a week of exile from work (pretty fancy term for “vacation”, no?) and went to a location where the only internet access was dialup. Before I left, I opened my “trip packing” database, checked off the boxes for “cold, relaxing, sun” (I was going to Canada), unchecked the box for “work” and set the “willingness to smell” field to a value of 9 (out of 10). I printed the resulting packing list and closed FileMaker for a whole 7 days, possibly the longest for me in three years.
That gap gave me some time to reflect on a number of nagging personal questions. For example: “Do I want to quit my day job and be a fulltime consultant?” or “Which will ultimately be a bigger letdown: iPhone, FM9 or the Heroes finale?” Read more
Roll Your Own Edit Mode
The Problem
As FileMaker developers, we take a lot of things for granted. For example, FileMaker’s Browse Mode/Find Mode feature is actually pretty slick; just place a field on a layout and it becomes both a data-update field as well as a query field without additional coding. However, when a layout is set to “save record changes automatically”, the frequency of people thinking they are in Find mode when they are actually happily clobbering data is enough to drive the most laissez-faire FileMaker developer nuts.
Sometimes, calling such problems “training-issues” just isn’t enough.
One solution is to roll your own Edit Mode feature. This technique uses the power of global variables in FileMaker 8+. In this example, I am going to combine scripts, a global variable and a custom privilege set to regulate users’ record-edit access.
Note: this article in intended to illustrate a general technique, do not rely solely on this example to secure your database.
Creating multiple child records from a list
Problem
You want to create child records from a list of values in a set of parent records
Solution
Create a loop-within-a-loop FileMaker script; use the power of indexed variables
Simplicity and Software Architecture
I’m always a bit behind the times so it was only recently that I found out that DevCon would be returning to the JW Marriott Grande Lakes in Orlando. I actually miss the Arizona setting. Sure, it’s hot in AZ but it’s a dry heat. Orlando is just as hot with the humidity but it does have better food going for it. While both cities suffer from a severe case of sprawl, there is something about the Sonoran desert that is seductive to me. Walking through the desert brush makes me more aware of life and the scale of it. It’s my personal Total Perspective Vortex.