FileMaker News

• FileMaker Joins MY SQL Enterprise Connection Alliance (MECA)
• Join the FileMaker Marketing Evaluation Program
• Studio Manager 8 is built for FileMaker 8.5
• Special Offers: Free eBook — Free FileMaker Server 8

New FileMaker TechNet Provides Exclusive Resources for Developers

Last week FileMaker unveiled the FileMaker Technical Network (FileMaker TechNet) – a new program that gives FileMaker enthusiasts exclusive access to technical content, a community of FileMaker developers and software to build better solutions faster.

Annual membership is $99US and is ideal for people who create FileMaker Pro solutions for themselves, build them for their organizations, or develop and distribute FileMaker solutions commercially.

FileMaker also announced the FileMaker Business Alliance (FBA), which provides sales and marketing support to organizations whose primary line of business is developing and selling FileMaker products or services.

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Going Beyond FileMaker Pro

Featuring: FileMaker Server 8

You may consider the additional cost of FileMaker Server to be too great for your workgroup. The fact that FileMaker Pro can host to 5 additional users in your workgroup might suffice for you. I would ask that you consider FileMaker Server as a long term investment in protecting your organizations time, money, and knowledge.

Take, for example, backups. With FileMaker Server, you can schedule weekly, daily or hourly backups of your databases. There's no need to take your databases offline while they are being backed up by FileMaker Server. If you only use FileMaker Pro to host your databases, you would be required to have all users exit the database, close the file, duplicate the file, start the file back up, and invite all your users to open the file again. Imagine the cost savings over time, in down time alone, just by using FileMaker Servers backup features.

Another important advantage is that your data will be available 24/7. With FileMaker Server, you can access your files at any time, day or night, with out concern of the designated FileMaker Pro host having their machine up. With very little effort, you can even access your FileMaker Server from a remote location — like for example your home. FileMaker Server will even secure your data by encrypting it with SSL encryption, to and from your copy of FileMaker Pro. Imagine the savings in fuel and time of not having to come to the office to be productive.

There are many more time and cost saving features and benefits to FileMaker Server. When you add them up and spread them over time, they more than cover the additional cost of the software.

-Rick Colcock, Corporate Systems Engineer, FileMaker, Inc.

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Special Note: USPS Postage Rates Increase Effective May 14, 2007

Are you ready?

Rate increase, new shaped based pricing and dozens of rule changes will affect the way your business sends mail.  As the global mailstream leader, Pitney Bowes can help alleviate your pain with the Pitney Bowes mailstation™ digital postage meter/scale which will help you in determining the cost of your mailing.  You get exact postage every time-no guesswork

To order call (800) 620-5653 or visit pbmailstation.com/filemaker and refer to order number 999993479 or to learn more about the postal rate increase click here.

Listen to the Podcast: Beginner to Advanced FileMaker Tips From Leading FileMaker Developers

Dig deep into geek and listen to FileMaker experts from Beezwax, .com Solutions, PaperCut Pro and WorldSync share their tips, insights and experiences in FileMaker development.

From project planning to managing customers' expectations, you'll hear it all in this podcast.

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FileMaker Web Seminars: FileMaker Server Hardware & Configuration Best Practices

Learn the best practices for running FileMaker Server in a Mac OS X or Windows 2003 Server environment. Discover helpful hardware management and monitoring tips to help you get the most out of your FileMaker solutions.

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Support Corner

Need a question answered?
FileMaker Customer Support is dedicated to providing our customers with the best service possible. Either find your answer online via the FileMaker Knowledge Base, or call us.

Tips and tricks

Discover Universal Cancel for Easier FileMaker Pro Scripting
A little modularity can make your database creation much easier.
By Stuart Gripman, Advisor Basics of FileMaker Pro technical editor

When I was a kid, my parents and teachers, exasperated by unruly behavior, would cry "I feel like a broken record." For those of you born after the Pleistocene, a "record" was a storage medium for music, that, when scratched, would repeat the same moment of music endlessly. My caretakers, weary of issuing the same reprimands countless times in a single day, felt like that scratched record. Whether my behavior ever improved is an open question, but when it comes to scripting with FileMaker Pro 8.5, repetitive scripting chores may leave you feeling like that broken record. Here's one way to ease the tedium.

Universal Cancel
Any sizeable database is going to have a lot of scripts that share commonalities. Consider the Cancel button on a custom dialog. Every time a custom dialog includes a Cancel button you have to write a whole If statement such as this one:

Show Custom Dialog
  [ Title: "Hey"; Message: "This is a message you might want to Cancel."; Buttons: "OK", "Cancel" ]
If [ Get ( LastMessageChoice ) = 2 ]
Exit Script [  ]
End If

A custom dialog can have up to three buttons (figure 1). The Get ( LastMessageChoice ) function returns the number of the button you most recently clicked on: 1, 2, or 3. In the example above, button number two is labeled Cancel. The If statement checks to see if the last button clicked was number two and if so, it exits the script.

Wouldn't you prefer to get that process down to a single script step? Simple. Create a script that only evaluates whether someone clicked on the Cancel button, and halt the scripts accordingly. Here's how it works. You write a simple script that compares the last button clicked on with the Cancel button's number. If they match it means the user clicked on Cancel and the scripts halt. If they don't match, the original script continues.

"Fine, but what if my Cancel button isn't always button number two?" you ask. It's no problem. When you call the dedicated Cancel script, you can tell it which button cancels using a script parameter. The Cancel script looks for a match between the script parameter and the last message choice number. Here's the Cancel script:

If [ Get ( ScriptParameter ) = Get ( LastMessageChoice ) ]
  Halt Script
End If

… and here's how you call it from another script …

Show Custom Dialog
  [ Title: "Cancel Example"; Message: "Click Continue to proceed."; Buttons: "Cancel", "Continue" ]
Perform Script
  [ "003  Cancel Handler [Cancel Button]"; Parameter: 1 ]

Now you can deal with Cancel buttons throughout your database simply by calling your Cancel script and furnishing a button number in the script parameter. Aaaah.