May Meeting: more “Ground Up” and FileMaker 12!

FileMaker 12 is just exciting people all over the place! The new layout features, new functions, better performance, and a new ways of putting stuff on your iOS device make for an exciting iteration of everyone’s favorite databasey productivity doohickey. And, since the Kentuckiana FileMaker Users Group is all about helping you learn how to apply all that good new stuff, you might want to stick around until the end of this message for some news about our upcoming programming.

This month we’re going a little bit geeky and a little bit easy. That means regardless of whether you’re geeky or, um, easy, you’ll have no excuse this month, because there’s going to be something for you.

Alan’s start-from-scratch exercise is really starting to flesh out. Come join in the fun and contribute your ideas and desires as we put some more meat on the bones of an original FileMaker app incarnating right before your very eyes.

Still basking in the glow of appreciation he received for the truly genius tip he presented last month (blog post coming soon about that), Brian Ginn will show you how to save space on your relationship graph, save time in your development, and, who knows, perhaps even discover a new sub-atomic particle, with FileMaker 12’s geekiest new feature.

Yes, you guessed it (you peeked didn’t you?), Brian will introduce you to FileMakers’ nod to industrial-strength databases [literally] everywhere, the new ExecuteSQL ( ) function! Can’t you just feel the power coursing through your body, emitting sparks from the tips of your fingers, powering up your apps to their next level? No? Hmmm, maybe you’re doing it wrong. Have you tried holding your tongue out the side of your mouth?

No matter. After Brian’s presentation you’ll want to go get fitted for your own new super suit! (No capes!) It’s truly THAT powerful. You really don’t want to miss it. (You may just not know it yet.)

Okay, now the future stuff: We will have a nationally recognized FileMaker design guru presenting his special “Design Smack-Down” presentation just for us (and anyone you care to bring). Albert Harum-Alvarez, founder of SmallCo, a FileMaker consultancy serving a lot of companies you’ve definitely heard of, is a renowned authority on the subject of great user interface design with FileMaker. A sought-after speaker at conferences, user groups and workshops, Albert has agreed to share his expertise with us, via the magic of the “inter-tubes.” All that remains to make that happen is to work out a date. We’ll let you know when that happens, but we’re trying for our regular June date.

Also appearing “soon, very soon” are the rhymingly-dynamic duo of Bill Kaiser and Bill Heiser, straight from the “mother-ship,” FileMaker Inc. itself, to give Kentuckiana the official intro presentation of dodeca-FileMaker! Stay tuned while we work out a date with them as well.

See you on the 22nd!

Right after you vote (well, the Kentucky people, anyway.)

–The Committee
Alan, Bill, Brian, Byron, & Jonathan

Date & Time:
Tuesday, May 22, 2012 (FOURTH Tuesday now, y’hear?)
12:00 PM - 3:30 PM (-ish)
BYOB (Bring Your Own Brown Bag)
Soft drinks provided

Location:
1234 South 3rd Street  (In the St. James area of Old Louisville)
Louisville, KY 40203

FileMaker 101 Classroom at:
http://g.co/maps/y3u77

Registration:
http://www.kyfmp.com/reg/

12 Days of 12

FileMaker 12 is out and you can get a ton of documentation and tech notes on FileMaker’s site. You can also join a webcast series of 12 episodes over 6 weeks here: FM Academy.

“The Madness” has totally overtaken us!

Indiana, Louisville and Kentucky fans appear calm and collected RIGHT NOW, but underneath (aye, deep in their tormented little hearts) the beast lies in wait for its moment to rage against all who block the road to the final four. The truly mad maintain their irrational hope for the slaughter to pass them by, but alas, many will fall, the twisted emotional wreckage of the defeated. Legion, indeed, are those who will engage in mob hysteria or retreat to the debilitating solace of self-administered medicinal extracts. ‘Tis a sad tale, ’tis true.

Regardless of how YOUR compulsion survives the social mayhem, though, you’ll make some marked improvement in this month’s session as we engage in some truly insane FileMaker therapy!

We are really proud of the progress made by Byron “Baby Steps” Songer, whom we all agree (don’t we?) did such a great job last month peeling back the layers of the relational database approach from the standpoint of the recently-escaped FileMaker user. B.S. was scheduled for release into the general population this month to share his experience at modeling a “reality” with more self-confidence and less anxiety. Unfortunately, at the last minute he had a severe setback. While they tell us he is making great strides daily, they want to hold him for another few weeks–for observation (they say). Regardless, we fully expect his complete recovery and intend to welcome him back into the mainstream at our April group session, where, if we all listen very quietly (and don’t make any sudden moves), we might persuade him to share more of his story of relational redemption.

One of the more profound tragedies of our little Cuckoo’s Nest (and the just-announced 2012 Substance Abuse Awareness poster child), Jonathan “Coke Head” Fletcher, will attempt to maintain his phosphoric-acid-bathed hold on reality long enough to host a further discussion into the subject loosely known as “FileMaker Standards.” While several REALLY SMART FileMaker-types have been the authors of this online project for a few years, we all know what “genius” is only “a fine line” away from, don’t we? Yup.

They don’t let Alan “Angry” Bird out of his cage very often, but with a promise of the right meds and the watchful eye of several burly orderlies, it was decided to let him present his new project, a database of our monthly tips, tricks, techniques, and resources that he will cough up before our very eyes. You may call it mass hysteria; you may call it a sad case of group-think gone wrong, but do come see for yourself. Come back for monthly visits to the ward as we flesh-out a totally psychotic solution for all of us to use. (Catch the note below about “homework” for this segment.)

Brian “don’t laugh at him” Ginn hopes to have at least a brief moment of lucidity this month as he shares a cool trick he discovered while mesmerized by the ones and zeros that flood his vision most of the time. It sounds way better than that electro-shock therapy we had the other day. (But you may decide otherwise.)

As usual, our lunatic ravings will be preceded by that tasty brown bag repast you brought (better to bring your own because you never know what they put in the food here, shhhh!) and the free soft drinks provided by the staff (hey, wait…).

Show up at noon and you can count on being carried out kicking and screaming no later than 3:30…

…um…

-ish.

–The Committee
Alan, Bill, Brian, Byron, & Jonathan

Date & Time:
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 (FOURTH Tuesday from now on)
12:00 PM - 3:30 PM (-ish)
BYOB (Bring Your Own Brown Bag)
Soft drinks provided

Location:
1234 South 3rd Street  (In the St. James area of Old Louisville)
Louisville, KY 40203
FileMaker 101 Classroom here:
1234 S 3rd St, Louisville, KY 40203

HOMEWORK:
Due to the mob-participation nature of Mr. Bird’s presentation, he has asked that you download the Developer Storage file from Foundation Database Systems and familiarize yourself with some of its basic workings. Bring it to the meeting (so as not to tick him off) and work in your own version as Alan presents it on-screen.

Read about it here: http://www.foundationdbs.com/downloads.html

Download it here: http://www.foundationdbs.com/Downloads/DeveloperStorage_1.0v2.zip

More of the same and some things new!

Join us February 28th!

We will continue with our series on FileMaker standards with a look at calculation control structures, error handling in scripts, and script annotation. Let’s discuss some ways that are described on FileMakerStandards.org and then discuss why we think our own personal methods are waaaaay better (or, just maybe, not).

And then, for those of you who are a little frustrated with presentations that require your neurons to seemingly leap tall buildings with a single bound, have we got a treat for you. Direct from his Fortress of Solitude tucked away (for camouflage) deep in the heart of Middletown, Kentucky, lets hear a warm round of applause for Apple Certified Consultant, longtime FileMaker developer and all-around super guy, Byron Songer, who will be asking the question puzzling super-heros and philosophers alike down through the centuries, “Just what are these relationship-thingies, anyway?”

Through the miracle of modern database theory, Byron will be showing you when to hold ‘em and when to go all in; when to take another step and when to duck flying objects, when to employ another useless metaphor and when to shut up and get on with the presentation description. Yes, that’s right ladies and gentlemen, Byron will show you just why you might want to add another table and its associated relationship(s) to your database, and when you could conceivably get by with the tried-and-true, but cumbersome, “flat file” approach.

Also, we will try, yet again, to get our freebie-file solution off the ground this month. Tools, resources, techniques and just stuff will be tossed into a database as the meeting progresses and when we are done we will have a FileMaker file that we can use to review the content of our presentations. You have to come to get your copy, but it’s free.

All will be revealed in due time, butcha gotta come. See you Tuesday.

Come join us and we share a bit of good fellowship with others as we learn about our favorite database “platform!”

–The Committee
Alan, Bill, Brian, Byron, & Jonathan

Date & Time:
Tuesday, February 28, 2011 (FOURTH Tuesday from now on)
12:00 PM - 3:30 PM (-ish)
BYOB (Bring Your Own Brown Bag)
Soft drinks provided

Location:
1234 South 3rd Street  (In the St. James area of Old Louisville)
Louisville, KY 40203
FileMaker 101 Classroom map.

Registration here.

Random

12/20/2011 The purpose of this file is to show you another way to generate a random number within FileMaker Pro but with a specific requirement. That requirement is I only want single digits as the result opportunity.

The Standard Way

Using standard built-in functions ( no custom functions ), you can learn the default way to generate a random number but even better you can learn the exact limits of the random function within FileMaker.

Single Digit Random Number

How to generate your own random number with the possible results of “0″, “1″, “2″, “3″, “4″, “5″, “6″, “7″, “8″, “9″ which is really ten numbers? Let’s go!

- Brian Ginn

About the author - Brian is a founding member of the Kentuckiana FileMaker Users Group. He is a regular contributor of content at the regular meetings. He is an accomplished FileMaker developer as he works in the private sector as an independent consultant to businesses. Contact Brian via email brian@brianginn.com or cell (502) 550-0092 direct.

Reference

“FileMaker Pro 10.0v3 addressed an issue where the “Random” calculation function could generate non-random values on certain machines. The “Random” calculation will now generate values greater than or equal to 0 and less than 1. The value will never be 1.

In versions prior to FileMaker Pro 10.0v3, the “Random” function returns “a random number between zero and one” including “zero and one”.”

FileMaker URL reference web link

I want a single digit random number. To get it I simply use the Random function but I add the Middle function to wrap it in. I ask the Middle function to start at the second value because the first is a period. I ask the Middle function to get one value as the second parameter. I command FileMaker via a script to give me a random number of one of the following: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 ( that gives me ten single digit numbers which I can then use in other ways within FileMaker. How?

Take the Middle ( text ; start ; numberOfCharacters ) in the form:

SetField [ table1::data21 ; Middle ( Random ; 2 ; 1 ) ]

NOTE: You could use: Right ( Random ; 1 ) but you’d never get a opportunity for a zero and therefor only nine possible digits instead of ten.

QR Code to this post:

Easy access from your mobile.

Holiday Get-Together!

Wouldn’t you all like to take a much-needed break from the relentless pursuit of rampant consumerism? Instead of going shopping for yet another gag fruitcake for that friend you don’t like all that much anyway, why not make something really yummy and bring it to share with your software sidekicks!

Yes, we’ll talk a bunch about FileMaker, but that’s not nearly as important as chowing down on Christmas cookies, or loading up on latkes, or putting away the pizelles, or (our personal favorite) eating a whole cheesecake by ourselves! Oh, did we say that out loud? Uh, we meant sharing one of Jonathan’s wife’s world-renown cheesecake masterpieces, with a fine selection of our software co-celebrators. Yeah, that’s it. Uh-huh, share. (Hey, maybe we can get her to make two!)

So, stay up all night on the 19th crafting your culinary creations–or merely stop by the convenience store on the way for a bag of cookies–and come gather with your Fellow Festive FileMaker-ers from 12:00 to 3:30-ish on December 20th (THIRD Tuesday this month!).

Yes, yes, we’ll have presentations on FileMaker and all, but we ask you, what is that compared to getting an early start on your holiday weight-gain? It’s better to pace yourselves anyway, rather than going for all those pounds at once! (We think we read that somewhere. Probably on the internet.)

–The Committee
Alan, Bill, Brian, Byron, & Jonathan

Date & Time:
Tuesday, December 20, 2011 (This month only: THIRD Tuesday)
12:00 PM - 3:30 PM - ish
BATTS (Bring A Treat To Share)
Vegetable soup and soft drinks provided

Location:
1234 South 3rd Street  (YES, that’s the correct address!)
Louisville, KY 40203
Holiday Treat Delivery Coordinates here:
http://g.co/maps/y3u77

Registration:
http://www.kyfmp.com/reg/

Resources to aid the FileMaker developer

At our August meeting Jason Scharf talked about the things he discovered at this year’s FileMaker DevCon. While presenting he showed off some tools and resources that he had accumulated, some recent, some he’d had for awhile. Asked to share them, he kindly forwarded a few of his favorite things:

Resources

Matt Petrowsky
http://filemakerstandards.org/dashboard.action
https://github.com/petrowsky/fmpstandards (includes custom functions)

Todd Geist (Geist Interactive)
http://www.geistinteractive.com/blog/2011/08/understanding-commit-record-video

Skeleton Key (ODBC FileMaker 11)
http://www.skeletonkey.com/FileMaker_11_ODBC_Drivers

Custom Functions
http://fmfunctions.com
http://www.soliantconsulting.com/customfunctions
http://www.briandunning.com/filemaker-custom-functions

Design Patterns
http://fmPatterns.com/
http://UI-PATTERNS.COM/

Development Tools
QuickCursor (Mac Only): http://www.hogbaysoftware.com/products/quickcursor
TextMate FileMaker Bundle : http://buzz.beezwax.net/2011/07/30/the-filemaker-ninjas-toolbelt-textmate-bundle
E-Text Editor (Windows, works with TextMate Bundle): http://www.e-texteditor.com/

Other cool stuff in Jason’s toolkit:
Safari Omnibar makes the Safari address bar behave like the Google Omnibar (unified search and url); free and open-source.
http://hackemist.com/SafariOmnibar/#about

TotalFinder, adds tabs and Copy/Cut/Paste to Finder; commercial, $18.
http://totalfinder.binaryage.com/

iTerm2, nice alternative to Terminal; free.
http://www.iterm2.com/#/section/home

The Unarchiver, will extract just about any archive format; free and open-source.
http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html

Enjoy!

It’s fall. It’s FileMaker. It’s fun!

It’s starting to cool off outside, but inside the FileMaker camaraderie is as warm as ever. Come on out and have lunch with us and talk the afternoon away about anything FileMaker. This month we have a variety of topics ranging from the real world practical to the downright geeky.

We’ll start off by helping one of our members with their in-house application by reworking its invoicing module to create a great deal more flexibility. Come see how invoices are generated when you have a lot of items to put on them.

Brian Ginn will be showing off a really awesome, but dead simple, technique he developed for creating very free-form reporting. He’ll also show us the demo he’s putting together with the goal of presenting at the Developer Conference next year. Come see if he has what it takes.

Alan Bird has a great bar code generation tool that doesn’t require a font or a plug-in (so it works on an iPad even!) that fellow committee-member Bill Holt wrote for him. He’ll show us how that works and talk about how he uses it as part of a process of quickly registering thousands of attendees at the shows and conferences he provides services to.

Cool stuff all around.

Schedule:
12:00-1:00 BYOBB (Bring Your Own Brown Bag) lunch and social (soft drinks provided)
1:00-3:00 Presentations and discussion
3:00-? Networking

DATE:
Tuesday, September 27, 2011 (Remember: FOURTH TUESDAY of the month)

LOCATION:
Universal Design
1234 S. Third Street
Louisville, KY
Map: here

Join us this coming Tuesday!

Scott Adams’ nod to, um, us

While humorous, yesterday’s Dilbert was not entirely complimentary to us database solution-mongers. Scott Adams, Dilbert’s counterpart in meatspace, makes the point that it is hard to be objective when you’re presenting yourself as a consultant and as a supplier.

I love the saying, “When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” I have been known to use it to put other people’s products and services in their place. The problem is that I am guilty of the same thing. I can see a FileMaker-shaped nail in every business I look at. I can see that FileMaker is the solution to every business’ data/workflow/management information issues. I can see the need for solutions that save money, improve efficiency, supercharge the bottom line, whatever, where oftentimes the business owner doesn’t even know they need one.

That begs the question, “Am I being objective?” or am I just a FileMaker fan-boy. Do I really think that the need is there, or am I just trying to sell something.

Every consultant needs to ask themselves that about any of their favorite solutions. FileMaker is a great tool for a myriad of jobs, but I still need to step back once in a while and ask the hard question: Has it become my hammer?

—jonathan fletcher

July Subject-of-the-month: Layout Design

Our next meeting is Tuesday, July 26th at the usual time and place.

Byron Songer and Jonathan Fletcher will be talking about the lessons they learned from a FileMaker layout design webinar they participated in this month. The webinar included 10 hours of tips, tricks and user interface design goodness. Jonathan and Bryon registered for the seminar simultaneously, each ignorant of the other’s interest. So, you get two completely different points of view on what was useful and important in this really intensive workshop.

As usual, you may also bring your questions, problems, solutions and just about any FileMaker related subject you want to discuss.

We’ll be there. Come join us for good, clean techy fun.

Schedule:
12:00-1:00 BYOBB (Bring Your Own Brown Bag) lunch and social (soft drinks provided)
1:00-3:00 FileMaker Design and Q&A
3:00-? Networking