FileMaker Pro Separation Model: My Experience
Posted: April 14, 2011 Filed under: Database, Technology Leave a comment »
One of my company‘s projects is coordinating the development of an exciting FileMaker Pro database. I leant what I know about FileMaker by watching John Osbourne’s excellent VTC Tutorials, and by reading The Missing Manual.
We’re deciding whether to design our solution as a single, or as a dual-file solution, and I want to share what I’ve learnt so-far. We’re setup with two files, DATA.fp7 and INTERFACE.fp7. ALL of our tables are currently in DATA.fp7, and they are linked into INTERFACE by adding to the relationship diagram.
Value lists: I’m glad to report that value lists are accessible across files, although you have to name them a 2nd time in INTERFACE.
Validation: Validation pulls through just fine. Where we’ve created special table instances just for validation, like in this very helpful example, we do this in the DATA file as the validation relates to core data. Where table instances are just used for interface purposes, they go in the… well… INTERFACE file!
Sharing: With both DATA and INTERFACE open on one computer, it seems that if INTERFACE is opened as a remote database on another, that it all works just fine.
Relationships:
That’s it for now, still not 100% settled on single or dual files, but I just wanted to share what I’ve learnt so far.
