PhillyFileMaker Blogging from DevCon

The FileMaker Developers Conference 2009 in San Francisco is fast approaching – PreCon sessions start Thursday August 13 at 8 AM, and the official opening session is 6:30 PM that night!

Since the release of FileMaker 10 in January this year, best practices for a number of techniques, practices and design patterns have changed drastically due to script triggers, the toolbar, and myriad other new features, and many of the scheduled sessions reflect this change in the FileMaker programming landscape.

So the 2009 DevCon promises to be an exciting time…and the Philly FileMaker User Group will be there.  Jason Mundok of IT Solutions will be on the spot and posting to this blog whenever he can pry himself away from a session.  We have some ideas in mind that are still in the works, so watch this space on Friday, Saturday and Sunday!

Other resources for following what’s going on at DevCon this year:

NEW: Chris Kubica’s blogging the DevCon here

NEW: Rick Stringer’s blogging the DevCon here

#fmdevcon hashtag on Twitter

@phillyfilemaker on Twitter (will be tweeting links to blog entries)

Adatosol will be podcasting; you can subscribe to the podcasts in iTunes or look for them here.

There’s no official word from FileMakerTalk (Matt Navarre & Matt Petrowsky) that I know of, but I’m expecting them to podcast as well.

If you’re lucky enough to be at DevCon, then FMPug’s DevCon Scheduler is indispensable and FREE; find it here.  You can not only view session schedules; you can see how many people plan to go to each session – know which ones are popular, and which ones you’re likely to find a good seat in.  As a bonus, it includes a Friend Locator and a Message Board!

Finally, FMPug is also offering sponsor discounts on a slew of products during DevCon, whether you’re at DevCon or not. All that’s required is that you be an FMPug member in good standing.  Go here.

- Colin

Two sets of summary data, One report

By Jerry Salem

I was working on a project for a client recently.  They were replacing an old system with a new one built using Filemaker 9.   The system is a standard client, invoice database.  One of the reports requested was a summary of sales.  The report presents sales summarized by product type, in addition sales sumarized by product location.  It was presented as a nice one page summary to ‘the boss’ weekly.

Tips and Tricks: Open a FileMaker database using a Hyperlink

(Editor’s Note: As some of you know I’ve been asking my colleagues to write tips and tricks content for the blog.  At some point in the future we may be asking the group community at large for contributor content as well.   Jerry is a 9 Certified FileMaker Developer at ITS; he also runs the 101 and Intermediate trainings here.  Thanks, Jerry!

– Colin).

One thing that really gets my goat is multiple security gates.  If I have already logged into my computer using a login and pw, why do I still have to use another login and password to further authenticate myself when I open my database?  Worse yet, sometimes an end user will put in an account/password to get into the computer, then the SAME account/password info to log into the database.

There are a couple of ways around this.  Most programmers will tell you, “Use Single Sign On authentication.”  FileMaker developers will typically say, “Use an opener file and save the login and PW there.”

Both of these are fine if the situation merits or permits it.  Here I present another option.  In this case, the end users are not using active directory to manage Accounts.  They also don’t want to use an opener file, for a number of reasons that are outside the scope of this document. 

New Authors…

Just a quick introductory post:

You’re going to see new authors crop up here from time to time, to post tips and tricks, thoughts on FileMaker, or ruminations on the state of software generally.  This is part of my push to expand the usefulness of the User Group beyond the the actual face-to-face meetings themselves.  We’ll be rolling in new contributors slowly, so you don’t need to pop in here every day – but know that going forward, not every post here will be a meeting announcement.

With that preamble over, I’d like to introduce Chad Sager.

Chad’s a lead FileMaker developer here at IT Solutions Consulting who’s been at the forefront in our office in terms of exploring the new possibilities that FileMaker 10 features offer us – new coding practices, old coding practices that can be retired, tricks and cool stuff generally.

He’s the second act at tomorrow’s meeting too, following up after Matt O’Dell.