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FileMaker Pro 9: Beginner Tutorials

Introduction / FileMaker 9 Family of Products pt. 1

Subtitles of the Movie

[00:00:00.0] Let's talk a little bit about the family of FileMaker products. It can be a little confusing when you see all the different products they have. What do you need to program FileMaker? What do you need to deploy FileMaker? What do each one of these products do? And so we're going to go over it for a few minutes so you understand which products you need to get the job done. You don't need all these products that you see listed here. So let's go over them briefly so you can get an idea of what you need to get your job done. So let's start with FileMaker Pro 9. This is your basic work course that everybody knows about. FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced, this is the same thing as FileMaker Pro 9, it just has some extra developer features. You have FileMaker Mobile 8 and notice that it says eight. That's not a typo. There is no need to update FileMaker Mobile to version 9 because it's a limited version of FileMaker. The work is on handheld devices. In fact, it was never updated for 8.5. There is no need to do that. And then you have FileMaker Sever 9 and FileMaker Server 9 Advanced. And we'll go over how these server versions work and which one you might need to deploy your solution. So let's start with the work course FileMaker Pro 9. This is the version that everybody has. It allows you to create fully customized relational database systems. You can create fields, tables, scripts, calculations, layouts; everything is there. You don't really need anything other than FileMaker Pro 9. In fact, it can act as a mini-server. You can host your FileMaker Solution to five simultaneous users over a LAN, WAN or Web browser. So it does just about everything you want and in a small company, five simultaneous users might be just what you need. Let's take a look at FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced. It has all of the features of FileMaker Pro 9. Every single one plus all the features we're going to talk about. One of the most interesting features is the ability to create standalone runtime solutions. What this means is you can create a solution - a single user solution, not multi-user and attach it to the engine of FileMaker, meaning that you can send that solution you created to anybody, even if they don't have FileMaker. And it will run as a solution. They won't be able to edit it. They won't be able to work with FileMaker, but they will run solution. So you can create a solution, put it up on a website, have people download it and they can use that. They may not even now that that's actually FileMaker Pro. So it's a very handy little tool to create standalone solutions. A lot of people use them for kiosks in shopping centers. It even has a Kiosk Mode - so a very handy, little feature of the version that's advanced. It also has great tools for debugging and troubleshooting. One of the features it has is a script debugger. This allows you to slow down your script. For instance, if you have a problem with your script, it's not working correctly, it may help to slow it down so you can see what's going on. And so you can walk through the different steps at a very slow speed and see what's happening in the background - very, very handy for troubleshooting any kinds of bugs you might have in your script. I use it all the time - very, very handy. And there's a lot of different features in there. We're not going to cover them right now. We'll cover them in later tutorials. One of my favorite features however is the Data Viewer. This is a floating pallet that allows you to create calculations. These calculations aren't really inside of your database solution. They're just floating there. And what it allows you to do is one thing, work with the scrip debugger. So if you want to see what the contents of a field are that your script might be referencing that doesn't happen to be on the current layout; well the Data Viewer can show you the contents of that field so you can see it update as your walking through the script or I often use it just to play around with the calculation. Rather than going into Define Database or into a script and creating the calculation and then running that script or looking for that field, I can play around with it and make sure it works inside the Data Viewer and then copy and paste it to where I want to go. So it's kind of like a scratch pad. It has many, many uses and we will use that quite a bit while we're going through the tutorials. I really love this feature so you'll see a lot of it. And then you also have the Database Design Report or DDR. This is a great little tool that will allow you to figure out whether you're using something properly inside of your solution. In other words, think of this scenario. What if you had a field and you were going "I'm not sure if I'm using this anywhere in my solution. Maybe it's not needed." Well you could go to Define Database. You could go to ScriptMaker. You could go to Define Value List. You could all over the whole solution and try to figure out if your using this field anywhere; or you could go to your Database Design Report, export it in XML or HTML format, open it up in a web browser and then take a look at what's going on inside of that report. And that report will say this field is used on this layout; used in this script, go on and on. Maybe you'll see that it's used nowhere. And so that's one of the greatest things is finding out what things are being used and how they're being used. It's a quick overview report and much quicker than trying to locate the information manually.

Tutorial Information

Title: FileMaker Pro 9: Beginner
Author: John Mark Osborne
SKU: 33783
ISBN: 1-933736-95-X
Release Date: 2007-07-26
Duration: 12.5 hrs / 145 lessons
Work Files: Yes
Captions: Available on CD and Online University
Compatibility: Vista/XP/2000, OS X, Linux
QuickTime 7, Flash 8

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