One of the most exciting new features of FileMaker 17 isn’t part of the product, technically: it’s a command line function called the Data Migration Tool. You invoke it from the terminal, but don’t let that fool you. This is a uniquely powerful tool, one that honors the pitfalls of developing in a hosted, high-trafficked […]

As y’all probably know by now, FileMaker 17 has been released, including the first production edition of FileMaker Server’s Data API. This API was originally released with FileMaker 16, but only as a “beta”, expiring September 2018. As you might expect, the FileMaker 17 Data API introduces significant changes. This means that any applications written […]

We have better tools than ever in FileMaker to create reusable modules. In this video of Mark Scott’s presentation at a Bay Area FileMaker developer meetup, he explores why the combination of card windows and JSON reigns supreme for modular FileMaker architecture. Included is an in-depth look at how modules can open, close, and communicate.

FileMaker 17’s new master-detail layouts display the list of records in the user’s found set. As the user performs finds, constrains, omits, sorts, or creates or deletes records, the master-detail portal will update to stay in sync. Imagine a portal that a user can sort any way they like, filter any way they like, and […]

The short version of this is that you probably want to upgrade to High Sierra (macOS 10.13) if you need to do much of anything with the built-in macOS version of Python and any network tasks.

In addition to the more typical external authentication methods, FileMaker supports client authentication using OAuth accounts from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. In this instance, I needed to set up a FileMaker Cloud server to use a company’s directory accounts, which were hosted at Azure. In order to set this up I hit a couple of […]

Recently, I needed to revert a database file hosted on a FileMaker Cloud 16 server. Due to a problem I was having with the Download function however I had to take a different route from the usual method.

Integrating A JavaScript PDF Viewer Into Native FileMaker—No JavaScript Coding Required! We recently built an application that included PDF document management. While it might seem as simple as a quick FileMaker container field, we wanted to impress our client with an integrated solution on par with a content management system (CMS). Here’s how we built […]

I needed to set up some monitoring for FileMaker Server that made moderately heavy use of the XML interface for Custom Web Publishing (CWP). The server was mostly working well, but was due for a rebuild, or at the least, an upgrade, but the client wanted to squeeze out one more season before we did […]

In looking back at our initial approach to logging FileMaker PSoS (Perform Script on Server) activity, I reflect back on a number of times where this has been extremely helpful. If you have come to rely on the benefits of PSoS then you also know some of its challenges — one of the biggest is […]

One of the things that I always think about is how linked Agile Methodologies are to Software development. But what concerns me the most is that sometimes it is believed that using Scrum in other contexts is impossible or that it is not even considered.