ISO FileMaker Magazine

Does your FileMaker database track when users log in and log out? Do you know how long users are logged into your system? Do you track what they do? Are there accountability requirements in place for your system?

In computing, the term Session applies to a "semi-permanent interactive information interchange" (source Wikipedia). At its core, this concept can be easily solved by adding a table called Sessions to your database, but there's a bit more to it than that.

Beyond adding the table and fields is determining what you want to track and how it can be accessed, and by whom. In most cases, a lot of the session information collected is immutable, because it identifies who does what in the database and for how long. This session data may also need to tie into your security model and how users access database data.

In this video, I provide you with a very straight forward, although a seemingly complex system (especially if you don't know FileMaker's security settings) for managing both logins and session information. You can use strictly FileMaker managed accounts or you can authenticate based on a table within your solution. It accounts for both lax and strict security requirements.

If you've not added session management features to your database then this video will help you get started in a pretty short time. Understanding how you can use a session record to store data specific to what the user is doing in the database is also helpful to the overall usability of your solution.

Personally, I'd never worked with any of the deep analysis tools too much because most of my own solutions are well understood in my own mind.

However, when considering what it must be like to dig into someone else's solution, I seriously can't imagine working without a tool like InspectorPro 5.

Vince Menanno has been working on this type of product for well over a decade if memory serves me right. This means he certainly knows his stuff and it shows within the comprehensive coverage that InspectorPro 5 provides.

While this video is a long one, at well over one hour, just knowing what you can find out about your own FileMaker solution is very enlightening. Vince could have gone longer showing me just how much information InspectorPro 5 can provide about your FileMaker solution!

It certainly would be interesting to know if more information is consumed via plain text in email, text messaging and e-books like PDFs and Kindle or via HTML on the web.

Of course, the format for the information doesn't matter as much as the content, but it sure is nice to be able to easily support a plain text format which easily integrates with the web's ubiquitous HTML. This is why Markdown was created.

Markdown, if you don't already know about, and use it, is a markup format which allows for converting plain text, which can still be read as plain text, into valid HTML.

Using it to compose content within a database, which may have anything to do with the web or even HTML emails, is just plain good sense.

The fact that integrating Markdown, within FileMaker, is so absolutely simple means you should start using it right away! In this video tutorial, I provide all the code and insight necessary to implement and use Markdown within any FileMaker database where you wish to have it. Markdown FTW!

Security is something of increasing concern these days - seriously! It seems as if we can't have a solid week pass by without hearing about some kind of significant breach. While web security has its own issues to think about, you can't just ignore your FileMaker databases.

It may seem all too easy to simply assume that FileMaker is a "low risk target" and just "hope" things are secured. In fact, it turns out that FileMaker's initial server setup is a bit insecure - at least if certain plug-ins are installed to the server without closing the hole which is the FMServer_Sample file.

Knowing the "whole" FileMaker development environment including, client, server, mobile, web and other technologies is something which comes only with time. However, with videos like this one, you can quickly come up to speed with the most critical information about how you can secure your FileMaker solutions.

Is your database running on a shared host? Does that host allow plug-ins? What happens when someone does get a copy of your file? Have you looked into FileMaker's Encryption At Rest feature? Are you doing everything you can to obscure, block and otherwise make it difficult to get into your solution?

If you can't answer all the questions above then watching this video will provide the answers and more!