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Radical Separation, part 3

Posted on May 13, 2013 by

Disclaimer: This article contains speculative and experimental techniques that are in the proof-of-concept stage. Use at your own risk and test thoroughly.

Today we’re going to delve further into the concept of virtual calculations, picking up where we left off last time, and with the assumption that readers are familiar with the material in part 1 and part 2 . We’ll look at some ways to make this technique less brittle (prone to breakage if objects are renamed), and also less opaque to DDR analysis tools such as BaseElements and Inspector. We’ll also see if the technique can be applied to auto-enter calc fields, and finally, we’ll explore some ways to make the technique easier to implement.

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Demo Files: Virtual Calcs, Part 3a, Virtual Calcs, Part 3b and Virtual Calcs, Part 3c

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Radical Separation, part 2

Posted on May 3, 2013 by

Disclaimer: This article contains speculative and experimental techniques that are in the proof-of-concept stage. Use at your own risk and test thoroughly.

In part 1 of this series, we defined radical separation as a separation model scenario in which the developer no longer has access to a data file once a solution had been deployed. Updates to the solution are delivered in the standard separation model manner: by swapping in a new interface file.

We explored the concept of “virtual calculations”, where certain (unstored) calculated fields in a data file derive their definitions from syntax stored as data in a special table in the interface file. The advantage of this being that calculation logic can be redefined programatically by the simple expedient of replacing the interface file.

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In the six weeks that have gone by since I posted part 1, I have made a couple improvements to the technique, one of which which we’ll examine in today’s demo file: Virtual Calcs, Part 2

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Outer Joins in FileMaker 12, part 3

Posted on April 17, 2013 by

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.

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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).

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Radical Separation, part 1

Posted on March 21, 2013 by

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

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Before the conference I posted a pseudo-F.A.Q. which included the following…

  • Q. What’s your experience with the Separation Model?
    A. I’ve used it heavily over the last seven years, for a variety of vertical market applications, custom projects and, recently, on a vertical market FMGo app.
     
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Graph Management + Conditional Icons

Posted on January 28, 2013 by

Recently I received a dual-technique FileMaker 12 demo from Eden Morris. Here’s what he had to say about technique #1:

In the Relationships Graph I show the use of colored labels to indicate where record creation, cascade deletes, and sorted relationships are enabled. Looking at the graph it easily shows that I can create customers from a company table but that they don’t cascade delete, you can create invoices and invoice lines from a project and the invoices and their lines cascade delete, and that the invoice lines are sorted.

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It’s an elegant way to display this info (but for some reason, it makes me crave jelly beans).

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ExecuteSQL: Using IN with Faux Dynamic Variables

Posted on December 15, 2012 by

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' )
";
""; ""
)

 
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PDF version of FM 12 ExecuteSQL Reference

Posted on November 2, 2012 by

Beverly Voth has produced a PDF version of The Missing FM 12 ExecuteSQL Reference with some additional material not available in her original posting from October 19th.

And the SQL4_fmdev2.fmp12 demo file has been updated with new queries.

Thank you Beverly for this major contribution to the FileMaker community.

Outer Joins in FileMaker 12, part 2

Posted on October 12, 2012 by

Last week in part 1 we looked at four “outer join” reporting approaches. Two of them involved ExecuteSQL, and I ended that section with the plea: Of course it’s possible that you, dear reader, know some FileMaker SQL voodoo to speed things up, and would be willing to share? Well Dr. Osamu Noda of Japan was kind enough to not only respond, but has provided a pair of demos (Outer Join Demo 5 and Outer Join Demo 6) which are significantly faster and which I am sharing with his permission.

Both of the demos are based on my original files from last week, and as you may recall, the aim was to show a week’s worth of sales for all employees whether they had any sales or not.

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Outer Joins in FileMaker 12, part 1

Posted on October 2, 2012 by

Recently I had an on-screen reporting challenge, and decided to try several different approaches to see which would be fastest. The challenge: Starting with two tables, one containing 20 Employees, and one containing 2,000 Sales records for the current year…

…display daily sales totals per employee in a seven-day grid, like so:

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Aggregates (Summary Fields) in Filtered Portals

Posted on September 13, 2012 by

The question on one or more of the FileMaker forums was asked and answered. Q: How do you get the Count() of the related records in a filtered portal? A: (paraphrased) duplicate the filtered portal and make it one row in height. Place the related summary field, “Count of…”, in the single row filtered portal. Voila! your count is now filter-specific. (The instructions for creating the filter for a portal and summary field are below.)

This recent topic led me to consider what other aggregate fields could be used with the filtered portal. And what about that Go To Related Record script step? Does it only show the related FILTERED records or all related records? The demo (bvoth_aggregates_in_portals.fmp12) and article have been created to answer these questions.

I started using filtered portals in cross-tab reports shortly after they were introduced. These are generally ways to show something very specific in each portal with sorts and filters and usually one row only. I had not explored the use of aggregates in these cross-tab reports until now.

Kudos to those before me that may have discovered these answers and tricks, too.

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