Flexible Reporting with Virtual Lists and ExecuteSQL I wrote about Martha Zink’s FileMaker DevCon 2018 presentation on Virtual Lists and ExecuteSQL about a month ago. The video has been released by FileMaker, and I recommend every developer to watch it. Non developers, walk away with the knowledge that FileMaker has the ability to produce powerful […]
Virtual Lists and ExecuteSQL But first, a side note The past three years I’ve attended DevCon, I’ve devoted all my time to interviewing well known FileMaker people and FileMaker vendors. And I’ve enjoyed the experience immensely. But for DevCon 2018, I made a change: I collected business cards of people I wanted to interview, and […]
I’m off for some (almost) spring skiing starting today, so no more posts until next Monday. Until then… The FileMaker Let Function A good exposition on the Let Function from Geist Interactive: The Let function has a lot of uses. It allows you to: Store a value into a variable (be it a function, a […]
Faster Reports with PSOS and Virtual Lists Anders Monsen’s DevCon 2017 presentation is loaded with great tips about PSOS and Virtual Lists, something your clients need from time to time. He doesn’t stop there, however, as he combines the use of ExecuteSQL to really speed up reporting. If you haven’t heard of Virtual Lists, it’s […]
Free FileMaker Downloads Day! The Free FileMaker Example list has been around for over a year now, and has some interesting statistics: Over 20,000 views! 247 (and counting) free downloadable files Free downloadable FileMaker example files from all over the world An example file for almost every kind of problem or solution you can think of […]
Kevin Frank digs into his bag of tricks for part 2 of his series and comes up with 11 good FileMaker Tips and Tricks. Tip #1: Get to know COALESCE Tip #2: FM/SQL dates revisited Tip #3: use the NOT operator to simplify logic Tip #4: Use “” in place of Get ( FileName ) […]
I’ll admit, my previous experience with developing FileMaker solutions in other languages was limited: I changed the labels in different runtime packages to support advertising research in India (Hindi), China, Japan, and various countries in Europe. Pretty basic, but it worked. Mike Duncan of Soliant takes it a couple of steps further, and provides a demo solution, […]
The virtual list technique has been around quite a while, and is very useful for displaying information from multiple tables in one cross tab report. Jeremy Brown of Soliant wrote a two part series recently on how he applied the virtual list to a problem he faced: FileMaker is a great platform. With its user […]
Learn the basics–and some great tips–of ExecuteSQL: Using Let statements Basic syntax Which is faster: ExecuteSQL or FileMaker search? What makes ExecuteSQL massively slower? Debugging the question mark you get with an error Which custom functions to use to improve coding time with ExecuteSQL Sorting, complex finds, and more
Tim Dietrich takes on ExecuteSQL and repeating fields, something most developers don’t use anymore. However, there are plenty of legacy databases out there using repeating fields, especially solutions written pre FileMaker 7. For those times when a repeating field is needed, Tim has the answers: It’s no secret that I’m not a big fan of repeating […]
One of the most frustrating issues when dealing with ExecuteSQL is the dreaded question mark (“?”) FileMaker returns as the result of the malformed query. Your query does not work for some reason, but you have no idea what the problem is. Daniel Wood, of Digital Fusion, stumbled upon a method to coerce a useful error […]
GREG LANE OF SKELETON KEY explores using ExecuteSQL to produce more effective charts–which is what our clients want, isn’t it? This is part one of three: Sometimes as software developers we get caught up in the details of collecting, storing, and displaying data. To our clients, this is rarely the ultimate goal. Our clients want […]
Very nice, Mislav. Thanks for developing and sharing such a useful tool. I can’t wait to use it. Published on Dec 13, 2013 Mislav Kos explains how to use Query Builder, a FileMaker tool he created to help write ExecuteSQL expressions. The tool does not rely on a wizard; queries are typed out manually. Key […]
ExecuteSQL – Taming the Beast Posted: November 19, 2013 | Author: Dave I’ve been getting to grips with the ExecuteSQL function. To say that I’ve been enjoying it would be partly true – but it can be a little tricky, not without its frustrations, and disappointing in its performance. BUT, I’m beginning to see just how powerful and useful it could be. […]