The Separation Model – Part 10 – Calendars Everywhere
In this video in the series, we're again laying some groundwork for future videos which deal with "separation issues". The content covered isn't super specified to the Separation Model, but does provide a wealth of knowledge about integrating a vital feature which is inevitably added to most any database - calendar widgets.
Even if your database never deals with scheduling events, you're going to need to filter out information based on dates, times and date/time ranges - if only for reporting purposes.
In order to make this happen, you'll often need some form of a calendar widget. Yeah, FileMaker does provide a great little calendar widget which can be used right on fields - and you may be able to get by with that alone - but really, "Why stop there?". Once you've implemented the calendar widget solution from this video, you may be hard pressed to use any other method. It's universal, it's flexible and quite powerful. Here's a hint, "Use a 'Calendar' utility table." Watch the video for more useful information!
Comments
WAN Tips
I know it may not affect your customer too much...but recently I started changing the order of some of my script steps to reduce network traffic. This really helps when you're working with separate files. Mainly, because the data file is usually elsewhere. But in any case, the same idea affects local files as well.
For example, find scripts.
Instead of:
Go to Layout ( layoutName )
Enter Find Mode
...do some stuff...
Perform Find
I started (because of a workshop I did with Mark Richman):
Enter Find Mode
Go to Layout ( layoutName )
...do some stuff...
Perform Find
Also, when I wasn't creating records through a relationship...I would do a find to return zero records, then create the new record. It prevents FileMaker from having to download that extra data from the file into it's temporary cache file.
So instead of:
Go to Layout ( layoutName )
New Record/Request
I now use:
Enter Find Mode
Go to Layout ( layoutName )
Perform Find (Restore) //any find that returns zero results
New Record/Request
Not only does it keep FileMaker from downloading data that you don't necessarily need right now, it prevents FileMaker from having to update the cache file for records you never actually touched (but were updated by another user).
Josh Ormond
Josh Ormond