But, should current users upgrade? For most, the answer is yes. To be fair, this bug probably doesn’t affect most users, since most people still use the common-sense FileMaker approach of putting both data and layouts in the same file.įor new buyers, FileMaker Pro 9 is the most attractive version of the product ever. In a Go to Related Record script step that uses a file reference (rather than a local table), when you specify the layout to go to in the current file, FileMaker still doesn’t display the name of the layout correctly. I noticed one old bug that has not been fixed, but it’s a pet peeve among developers. I’m particularly fond of the way the debugger in FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced automatically lets me track the current value of every field and variable used in a script. FileMaker Pro 9 Advanced includes all of the enhancements just mentioned, plus some small improvements of its own. There are many other smaller changes, including a new startup screen, better online help while you work, live updating, and more. The latest version of FileMaker Pro finally makes it possible to group related scripts together inside organizational folders, and serious scriptwriters will be grateful. This is a very welcome improvement over FileMaker’s earlier preference for using XML and XSLT technologies to program Web applications. A process that used to make even experienced network administrators break out in an anxious sweat has been improved so much that I was able to get the server up and running in under 20 minutes.įileMaker Server and Server Advanced also provide better and easier support for PHP, an open-source programming language used to run many database-driven Web sites. But even for small numbers of users, FileMaker Server is the preferred way to go, and the installation and set-up is much easier to negotiate in version 9. If you only expect half a dozen or so users to connect to your database, you will be happy to know that the number of peer-to-peer connections allowed by FileMaker Pro, which dropped from nine to four in a previous release, has risen back up to nine. And developers can even use SQL data sources in field-level calculation formulas.Īnd what if you turned to FileMaker Pro in the first place because it wasn’t SQL? There’s good news for you, too. If you have the proper access privileges, you will be able to create or delete records. Although the data is actually stored in the SQL database, you can interact with it in your FileMaker database-seeing live data that updates automatically, editing that data, and writing it back to the SQL database so that other users accessing the same data will see the changes you’ve made. If FileMaker Pro can see the SQL data source in the simple Find Data Source dialog, all you have to do is select it, authenticate, and you’re in. Well, with FileMaker 9, you can now reference and use an SQL data source in exactly the same way that you can reference and use another FileMaker file. So for example, by adding a simple file reference to my billing database, I was able to post payments in my checking database at the same time, without actually having to open and edit the checking database. It was finally possible in FileMaker Pro to create applications in which all the data was in one file and all the elements of the application (such as layouts and scripts) were in another. File references opened up a number of opportunities for FileMaker developers. One of the revolutionary features that appeared in FileMaker 7 was the ability to create in one FileMaker database file a reference to another file, and then to use that referenced data as if it were actually stored in the current file. In short, FileMaker Pro 9 offers SQL without tears. But that’s about to change: with FileMaker Pro 9, if you’ve got a SQL data source handy that was set up by somebody else, you can now connect to that data source and make full use of it without knowing a thing about SQL.
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