29 Mar 2019: Demo file has been updated to v2. See comments for details.
Editor’s note: Geoff Gerhard of Creative Solutions is one of those “quiet” developers who has been helpfully sharing his knowledge in online FileMaker forums for more than 20 years. I personally have benefited enormously from his expertise, and am pleased to feature his first appearance as a guest author here on FileMaker Hacks.
Demo file: BillOfMaterialsDemo-v2.zip
Does this sound familiar? You’ve rolled out a solution that includes a single-record Settings table where authorized users can enter/update various system-wide settings, including one or more fields where the items will appear in popup menus… and then comes the inevitable question: Why don’t items in popup menus appear in the order I entered them?
It’s a reasonable question, and in the past you might have replied, “Because value lists based on text fields rely on field indexes, and for text fields their sort order is alphabetical”… but after reading today’s article your new answer will be: “No problem — let me take care of that for you.”
Interestingly, the above is accomplished with the same value list attached to all three popup menus, and no script triggers… or scripting of any kind for that matter. Read on to learn how.
16 Sep 2017: this file (Excel Exports, v7d) fixes a bug where empty fields would cause values to appear in the wrong columns.
This is a follow up to last week’s part 6, with three refinements.
Editor’s note: Today I’m pleased to present a guest article and accompanying demo file written by Joel Englander on using ExecuteSQL + a global multi-line key as an alternative to FileMaker’s built-in portal filtering mechanism, with dynamic portal sorting included as an added bonus.
Demo file: fm-sqlportal-filter-and-dynsort.zip (75 Mb compressed, 230 Mb uncompressed)
Over the last few years I’ve been collecting miscellaneous tips and tricks with the thought of eventually aggregating them into a blog posting, and it appears that day has finally come. Ideally there will be something new and useful here for developers of all levels, from the neophyte to the most grizzled of FileMaker veterans.
We start off with a couple FM 14-specific tips.
In layout mode in FileMaker 14 you can hover your mouse over any badge and an informative tool tip will display.
Did you know you can add new line above the current line in the Script Workspace by pressing Shift-Return? It works with the standard Return key, as well as the numeric Enter key.
Recently a colleague contacted me with some questions about making ExecuteSQL found-set aware, and I realized that while I had addressed aspects of the problem in various blog postings over a multiyear period (for example, here and here), I had not assembled my thoughts into one cohesive, up-to-date article.
Well, that shortcoming has now been addressed, and today we’re going to look at three demo files, all of which rely on the summary list field type (introduced in FM 13).
Note: Interface file #1 requires FM 14 or later; interface file #2 works with FM 12 or later.
What do you get when you combine the Separation Model + FM 14 placeholder text + ExecuteSQL + a million-record table + a variable array + Get(CalculationRepetitionNumber) + the Mod and Ceiling functions + a couple custom functions, with blazingly fast (local, LAN and WAN) performance thrown in for good measure?
This article w/ accompanying demo (fm-14-separated-data-mining.zip), that’s what.
Provide a data-mining interface to query a million-record table (cc_transactions) containing 20 years’ worth of credit card transactions. The client wants to be able to pick a date via a calendar widget, and see transaction info for that date, summarized by card type, transaction type and region.
This is a separated solution, with cc_transactions living in a file called z_data.fmp12, and a specific requirement for this project is to not make any schema changes to the data file. The data-mining will take place in a separate interface file… or in this case, two interface files, since we’re going to look at two methods. Continue reading “FM 14: Separation Model Data Mining”
I’ve said before, and no doubt will say again, that one of my favorite things about this blog is how much I learn from your feedback and the demo files you send me.
Recently I received a file from Otmar Kramnis of the Hochschule Luzern demonstrating the fastest SQL-based method I have yet seen to solve the challenge we looked at in part 1 and in part 2, and with a few minor modifications, this is the demo we’re going to focus on today: Outer Join Demo 7
As you may recall, the aim is to show a week’s worth of daily sales totals for all employees whether they had any sales or not.
Or, to restate the problem in more generic terms: we need to show all values from table A, whether or not there are any matching values in table B. This is known as an “outer join”, or more precisely a “left outer join”, since we want to see all values in the “left” table (Employees), whether or not they have corresponding matches in the “right” table (Sales).
Disclaimer: This article contains speculative and experimental techniques that are in the proof-of-concept stage. Use at your own risk and test thoroughly.
Earlier this month I had the honor and the privilege to do a presentation on the topic of Radical Separation at the PauseOnError un-conference in Portland, Oregon, which included a demo file resembling this one: virtual-calcs-part-1-v2
Before the conference I posted a pseudo-F.A.Q. which included the following…
Editor’s note: Today we have a guest article written by John Weinshel, whose knowledge of SQL in general, and FileMaker+SQL in particular, runs deep. John’s contributions in various online forums are always worth reading, and it’s a privilege to present his thoughts on this topic here.
The new ExecuteSQL() function in Filemaker 12 does not work dynamically (with the question mark) as expected with the IN function (nor with BETWEEN). For example, we might expect the following statement to return all the ID’s for contacts whose first name is either John, Mary, or Renee:
ExecuteSQL ( " SELECT c.PKContact FROM Contacts c WHERE c.fname IN ( ? ) "; ""; ""; " 'John','Mary','Renee' " )
…but it doesn’t. The following does work, but it’s not dynamic:
ExecuteSQL ( " SELECT c.PKContact FROM Contacts c WHERE c.fname IN ( 'John','Mary','Renee' ) "; ""; "" )
Continue reading “ExecuteSQL: Using IN with Faux Dynamic Variables”
