I've run three complete FileMaker 6 databases through MetaDataMagic 2 with no problem in the last 48 hours. The biggest one so far, my Studio Manager product, took about an hour to process with its 27 files and tons of fields, layouts and scripts. I was quite pleased with the level of detail of information I got and the ease of getting it.
I love that I don't just see a progress bar during the analysis but instead a list of records with time elapsed as each analysis task is completed on each file. There are 27 analysis tasks. Some tasks are quick and others take longer. The longest task in most situations is going to be *get layout item data* - that's the step where every layout object is itemized and described down to it's exact position on the layout.
One of the most interesting pieces of information I found out about my Studio Manager product was how many times files had not been closed properly. Many of these files have been around for several years and I could scan the list to see how much wear and tear they have endured. Good to know. In one file the number of improper closes was 20. Since I'm having no problems with it, I won't do anything about it right now, but this information would go into my decision-making for whether or not I would want to rebuild it from scratch in FileMaker 7. I like this information!
The process. Here's what I did to get started.
- Went to New Millenium's website and downloaded MDM using their shopping cart
- Cracked open the ReadMe file for basic operating instructions.
- Opened the main FileMaker file.
- Decided which system to analyze first.
- Clicked the *Process a New Solution...* button
- Selected the folder to process, entered master passwords and clicked *Go*
- Immediately up came a second window with records listing progress and duration
- I watched most of it go because it was fun and then did something else while waiting for completion
- Then I jumped to looking at any error listings.
- Next stop was the Files Not Closed Properly list...
- Later, I wanted to do a 2nd analysis for files for one of my clients.
- To do that, I just duplicated the folder for the first analysis, renamed it and started MDM up again.
- Then I clicked the *Delete all Metadata* button.
- Then clicked *Process a New Solution...*
I needed one of my analyses for a specific purpose: to give my client a correct list of relationships in all the files so that she could double-check them to make sure they were correct. She had opened files from a remote machine when only some of the files were open on the server and some of the relationships got misdirected. I was able to go to the Relationships file for her analysis and quickly send her a pdf by email.
More soon as I use MDM 2 for helping me analyze my product's readiness for conversion to FileMaker 7!