Chart Plot Area
Monday, April 26, 2010 at 09:07AM Chart Plot Area
CATEGORY: Reporting
CLASS: Charts
The area of a FileMaker 11 chart between the X and Y axis is referred to as the plot area. This is smaller than the overall size of the chart object because the chart element may also include the chart title, legend, x-axis title, y-axis title and y-axis scale.
The term comes into play when you are trying to determine how many x-axis categories you can fit into the determined plot area and still make the charts result useful to its audience.
© 2010 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com
The material on this document is offered AS IS. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.
Default Script
Monday, March 15, 2010 at 09:03AM Default Script
CATEGORY: Scripting
CLASS: General
In early versions of FileMaker scripting, a new script would always have some default script steps included. After a lot of input from the developer community, FileMaker removed that default action. This is because the first step after creating a new script was to remove the automatically added steps created by default.
In FileMaker 10, the default script action has been added back in as an option. This is available from the down arrow button that is found right next to the “New” button in the Manage Scripts dialog box.
When selected, a new script will automatically have the steps of Enter Browse Mode, Go To Layout and Perform Find within them. As of FileMaker 11, there is no way for a developer to create their own default options for this feature.
© 2010 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com
The material on this document is offered AS IS. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.
List Separators For Scripts
Tuesday, October 13, 2009 at 11:18AM List Separators For Scripts
CATEGORY: Scripting
CLASS: Technique
In FileMaker 9, we were finally given the ability to organize our scripts into folders. Before this, the main way to organize scripts was by creating a new script given the name of a single hyphen. This would create a dash separator where the script would normally be and you could move this uniquely named script into a position to organize your scripts by their function, entity associated with or any other category that fits your solution framework.
Also in FileMaker 9, we were given a pop down menu that automatically creates the script separator item for use but the previously technique works as well.
© 2010 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com
The material on this document is offered AS IS. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.
Isolating Relationships
Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 12:27PM Isolating Relationship
CATEGORY: Relationships
CLASS: Relationship Graph
By default, the FileMaker relationship graph naturally leans towards a structure where every table occurrence is linked to another. Since FileMaker relationships can ...
- flow through one table occurrence to another
- flow in a bidirectional manner
- include tables from external files
the amount of flexibility in FileMaker relational design is almost endless! That almost endless amount of flexibility in a complex database structure can practically kill said database solutions more likely than empower them.
In practical FileMaker database design, you may want to lean more towards a relationship graph that would be inspired by the television show detective Adrian Monk. (http://www.usanetwork.com/series/monk/) Just like Monk wouldn’t want the peas and carrots on his dinner plate to touch, you would likely not want to have your table occurrence groups to touch.
Isolating your FileMaker relationships into logical units (called TOGs for Table Occurrence Groups) is a method adopted by most professional and in house developers. The most common technique is employing a method called Anchor / Buoy.
© 2010 - Dwayne Wright - dwaynewright.com
The material on this document is offered AS IS. FileMaker Pro is the registered trademark of FileMaker Inc.