ISO FileMaker Magazine

People do good things - and - people do bad things. If people only did good things, we'd never need security, because nobody would fear what would happen when the bad comes out.

Of course, mistakes happen as well and killing a bunch of mission critical data is something you certainly want to avoid. So, whether you're worried about the bad things people do, or the fact that people simply make mistakes, you'll need to add some security to your database.

This video covers the ins-and-outs of FileMaker's security model and how you'd go about using it. Coming in at around an hour, this is pretty comprehensive, but doesn't cover every tiny detail.

If you've never worked with FileMaker's security and everyone is simply accessing your solution with the same username and password, then this video should give you everything you need to get started. It also provides enough information to implement a pretty complex security setup.

Before you ever write a single line of code, within FileMaker or anything else, your primary goal should be maintenance and clarity. If you can't understand your own code later, then no one else will either. If your code is a pile of spaghetti, it will be extremely hard to maintain - and - just not that fun.

The principle of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) coding is such that, you can make sweeping changes in singular locations. This makes your code more maintainable and actually more fun to work with. It also becomes more "portable" in that you can more easily copy and paste it into other solutions.

This video presents the concept of DRY coding as it relates to FileMaker development and how to approach your logic and design before you simply head on off to the next big script or feature.

FileMaker's Layout mode is the one place where you present the information contained within your database. The presentation can be broken down into categories depending on your solution. The two most simple categories are "screen" and "output".

When designing your solution, the degree of creativity used is entirely up to you. It's knowing the tools and how information can be presented which will help you decide.

It's certainly possible to create an entire FileMaker solution with all Form views, all List views, or both Form and List views. There's no one perfect way in how you present the information.

In this video, I do my best to provide every piece of know-how about FileMaker Layouts and their various parts. Using this knowledge, you should be able to create the type of screen or output you're looking to achieve.

When you hear the word 'schema', and think about your database, you may think this deals with how your database is structured. While true, the data connections you make within the Relationship Graph are only one part of your whole solution.

You'll certainly have scripts which define the logical "use and flow" of how people interact with the data. Yet, the key to knowing how to structure your data schema is knowing what your options are and when to set them.

Part of knowing how to structure a database comes from knowing the options available, the other part comes from experience of knowing how to break out data so it fits the desired result - a true art derived from practice. There truly is no one single way of structuring the data because it depends on how it's going to be used.

This video takes a look at the basic setup of how data is most commonly stored and pushed around. You'll be provided with insight into the various possible options and provided with some tips about working within FileMaker's Relationship Graph.