FileMaker Pro 9: Intermediate Course

My name is John Mark Osborne and I'll be your instructor for this tutorial. I want to tell you a little bit about myself so you know an expert is teaching you. I want you to feel confident that the techniques you learn in this tutorial will help you to create a very, very successful FileMaker solution. I've been developing and training exclusively with FileMaker Pro for the last 17 years. I'm a FileMaker 7 and 8 certified developer. In other words, I passed a test that FileMaker Incorporated gave. At the recording of this tutorial, at the time we did it, there was no 8.5 or FileMaker 9 certification test. I started out my FileMaker career working at Claris technical support. Now, Claris is the company who owned FileMaker before FileMaker Incorporated owned it. It was the same company actually, just that Claris had a whole bunch of products and they dropped them to focus on the FileMaker product line and therefore, they changed their name. I worked at Claris technical support for five years and eventually became the technical lead for FileMaker Pro. And this involved working with the development team, handling issues, escalation issues from the phones. I was the go-to person in the department for FileMaker Pro issues. When I left Claris, I started a company called Database Pros. Database Pros is one of the most popular FileMaker websites on the Internet. One of the reasons why is there are hundreds of free tips, tricks, articles and techniques. You can just go there and download till your heart's desire. There's probably too much information to download at any one time and it is updated every month. For that reason, we get about 35,000 hits per day and if you want to visit yourself, just go to DatabasePros.com. A long time ago, about ten years ago, I co-authored a popular book called Scriptology. Uh, a lot of people still ask for it, but it is ten years old. It was covering FileMaker 3, 4, and 5 but it was so popular it became a developer handbook. In fact, people still ask for it today. It covered scripting and calculations in intermediate to advanced levels so this is really my forte. I love scripts and calculations and these tutorials will focus on them, but we also cover relational design, calculations, auto-enter, everything gets covered in here so you can create your own solution. In 1999, FileMaker Incorporate gave me an award. It is a prestigious award for developing outstanding technical resources. They don't give many of them away and I got one a long time ago, one of the first ones that was ever given out. Currently, I'm an authorized trainer. That's one of 12 trainers in North America and I've been authorized since the beginning for series one, two and three. So FileMaker Incorporated chose me to be one of the trainers in North America to teach their specialized training course that they developed. For the last ten years I've also been the chairperson and presenter for the Mac World Power Tools conference. This is a two-day FileMaker Pro only conference at the Mac World Expo. I'm also the technical editor for FileMaker Adviser magazine. One thing I do there is I am the editor for the popular tips column at the back of the magazine. There is usually three or four tips every month that covers FileMaker information. I'm also a technical editor assisting with topic selection, editing and future directions. I'm also a platinum-level FBA member. Now, this used to be the FileMaker Solutions Alliance and I was a partner-level FSA member. But it's changed to be called the FileMaker Business Alliance and I am also a platinum level, the highest level there. There's only approximately 25 members inside the FBA and we basically help FileMaker Incorporated with their most important customers. So there's a little information about me. Hopefully I've convinced you that I have the skill level to teach you to be an outstanding FileMaker developer.  

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