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Thinking About JSON, part 1

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I’ve been working on a couple large JSON projects over the last few months, and with the one year anniversary of FileMaker having built-in JSON capabilities just around the corner, this seems an opportune moment to share some reflections and opinions (some of which may contradict JSON-related opinions I have expressed previously).

Demo file: json-sandbox.zip

The following is intended to be a series of observations, rather than a structured introduction to JSON in FileMaker. If you’re looking for the latter, I recommend these resources in particular.

At any rate, if you’re not yet completely comfortable with JSON perhaps some of the following will be helpful, or failing that, amusing (intentionally or otherwise). Continue reading →

Custom Field-Based Value Lists

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Introduction

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? 

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The “problem”: field-based value lists sort alphanumerically

It’s a reasonable question, and in the past you might have replied, “Because field-based value lists rely on a field’s index, and their sort order is alphanumeric”… but after reading today’s article your new answer will be: “No problem — let me take care of that for you.”

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From demo #4: field-based value lists mirroring the order of their underlying source fields

(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.)

Continue reading →

Exposed by Tableau

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Editor’s note: today we have a guest article written by John Weinshel, who has been quietly contributing to the FileMaker community for 20+ years. John’s thoughtful postings have helped developers at all levels of expertise, and I’m pleased to present his thoughts on Tableau here on FileMaker Hacks.

Demo files: exposed-by-tableau.zip (6Mb, contains two .twbx files)
Tableau trial: https://www.tableau.com/products/trial

The Tableau connector widget for the FMS 16 data API has made developers aware of the incredible interactive charts and graphs in Tableau. What may be less obvious is that Tableau can also tease out data that is hard to see natively—independently of the cool graphs.

FileMaker data is about a thing, an entity—the customer, stock, auto part, invoice item, reservation. With some additional work, we can see patterns in groups of data, but the default is to deal with it at the row level.

Visualization tools like Tableau, on the other hand, start out with groups of data. With some additional work, Tableau can elicit information about individual records, but the default is to work at the aggregate level. One of its strengths is, in fact, revealing patterns about groups of groups.

This post looks at how Tableau can—apart from its dazzling graphics—reveal hidden information within FileMaker data. It does not get into how to build calcs and views, nor how to connect Tableau to FileMaker data; some suggestions for learning about Tableau appear at the end of this article. Continue reading →

Virtual List on Steroids

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[Note 1: as always a huge thank you to Bruce Robertson, for inventing virtual list, and for many other contributions to the FM community over the years.]

[Note 2: the following assumes the reader is familiar with basic concepts presented in Virtual List Reporting, part 1.]

This is a follow up article to document new material from my recent FM-DiSC presentation: Virtual List on Steroids. The presentation was intended for developers who are (at least) somewhat familiar with virtual list, but for those not actively using virtual list, I decided to begin with a demonstration of “the problem” (or one of the problems at any rate) that virtual list was invented to solve.

Demo file #1: Step One – Admitting There’s A Problem

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Excel Exports using XML and XSLT

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Editor’s note: Once again it is an honor and a privilege to present an in-depth guest article written by Beverly Voth.

This is a follow-up to the User-Friendly Excel Exports series by Kevin Frank, but using an XML export along with various XSLT to give you .csv or .xls (for Excel). The first demo is a quick export (to CSV – comma-separated values) using an XSLT to help explain the relationship with FileMaker Pro XML export. How an XSLT style sheet reads that data to transform it into another text format (.csv or .xls) is also explained throughout the article and in comments within the XSLT. The demos will get increasingly more complex, but ultimately more “user-friendly”.

Demo file: Excel-Exports-using-XML-and-XSLT.zip

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Reciprocal Linkage, part 3

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Note: Leaner does not always mean faster, especially if record counts will be large… in which case I would recommend going with the approach discussed in part 2.

[3 Jan 2018: demo updated to version 3.2 as per Jens Rasmussen’s comment below.]

[2 Nov 2017: demo updated to version 3.1 as per my exchange with Jonathan Mickelson in the comments section below.]

I thought after part 2 that this technique had been thoroughly discussed and dissected, but Geoff Gerhard of Creative Solutions writes to point out that, if the goal is to have as few moving parts as possible, the table occurrence (TO) count can be further reduced, from four to three…

…and he has provided a demo file which I am sharing with his permission.

Demo file: reciprocal-linkage-GGv3.2.zip

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Reciprocal Linkage, part 2

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This is a quick follow up to last week’s article on reciprocal (bi-directional) linking, and will assume the reader is familiar with that material. Paul Jansen of APJ Computing Solutions sent in a revision of one of my files demonstrating that, among other things, the graph could be a good deal leaner (as per my stated goal of making the approach as simple and lightweight as possible), and I am sharing that file today with his permission, along with my own attempt at further simplification.

Demo Files

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Reciprocal Linkage

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Challenge: in a multiuser document management system, facilitate the linking (and unlinking) of any document with any other. Make it clear which documents are linked to the current document, and make sure the approach is multiuser friendly — in other words, allow document records to be linked and unlinked even if one or both of those document records are currently being edited by another user.

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Today we have two demo files, one using standard serial numbers and one using UUIDs. Except for serials vs. UUIDs, the two files are functionally identical, and in the interest of clarity, I’m going to focus primarily on the serial number version.

Demo files: reciprocal linkage & reciprocal linkage with uuids  Continue reading →